Well, you've done it now
by Byakugan789
Summary: After the final battle at hogwarts a bored, traumatized Harry discovers Dumbledores original plans for the Deathly Hallows. Torn between fury, hope and amusement he decides to use them himself in a last ditch effort to save his family. A house of cards Parody on popular Harry Potter fanfic tropes and a reminder to always, always pay attention to the warning labels. Up for adoption
1. Chapter 1

AN: This was originally meant as a parody of the usually HPFF Time-travel shenanigans, my irritation at the deathly hallows, bemusement over Miss Potter Fics and my general worldview that yearns to point out just how much most popular fiction is really truly a house of cards... but then it just...MUTATED! But then, well, which of my stories haven't? The rebirth of Tammy riddle was only supposed to be 4000 words, but it ended up being 18000 and people were appalled at how I "cut it off suddenly there at the end." This particular piece of insanity has been simmering for almost a year in case anyone's interested and will NOT be going any further. If anyone wanna see where it goes you're free to try and adopt it. Or ReWrite it as a challenge fic if you want. Otherwise? Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Oh, yeah, these. Most of the world setting and characters belong to Lady Rowling of the ridiculous bank account, not this poor ex college student of opposing finances. Everything else is a parody of something else you may or may not recognize.

Well, you've stepped in it now...  
>by Byakugan789<p>

Harry stood before the 'Veil of Death' in the department of mysteries. It had been mere months since he had defeated Voldemort and if he did this right, it would soon be almost two decades before. In his right hand he gripped the elder wand, and his left a book bound in human skin. He had found the tome locked in one of Dumbledore's chests after the battle, just looking for something to do, something to keep him busy and moving. He had killed himself earlier that night and for the first time in his existence, found peace. It was a humbling thought, and traumatizing… Ron, Hermione and Ginny had survived the night as had many others but so many of his important people had died… oh so many. He had been ready to accept that, had given his life for that, but he hadn't counted on the books and papers he had stumbled upon in his old professor's belongings.

The deathly hallows when united were said to make their bearer the master of death, but none of the books he had read before that fateful night had ever properly hinted at what that really meant. Would it allow the bearer to cheat death? Would they become capable of deciding who lived and who died? Perhaps they could resurrect those who had passed on, properly, rather than as ghosts, infiris or shades. The truth was far stranger. Individually or together the three items were little more than an incredibly powerful arsenal.

The cloak, known as the 'shroud of death' was capable of hiding the wearer from any known form of magical detection, even Alastor Moody's magical eye. The reason he'd been detected by the imposter was actually because the protection was too perfect, leaving him a hollow in the fabric of magic that stuck out like a sore thumb. While under it you were protected from not only direct observation, though not indirect as he had often found, but shielded from the perception and even aggression of the dead. Useful in few situations in the regular world; but essential to what he was planning to do now.

The wand, so named by its mysterious creator as the 'touch of death' allowed for perfect conversion of one's magic into their intended spell, not amplifying it, but rather cleaning up the mess left by normal casting and acting as the loophole in any immunity your opponent might possess. While having the wand didn't make one unbeatable, requiring the user to still have skill of their own, no spell cast by the wand could be resisted by the target upon which it was cast. Dragons, giants, even dementors, could be taken down by properly fired stunners as easily as humans should the master of the wand ever gain the knowledge that they could simply do so. It wasn't because the spells were stronger, but because their vaunted resistances or immunities to spells didn't matter before death. All were made equal in her eyes.

And finally the stone, the exalted 'will of death'. The tales of Beetle the Bard only hinted at its true power. The stone could not in fact raise the dead, for she let none escape her; but it could however command them. The shades of his friends and family that had accompanied him in the forest when he had gone to meet his own demise and indeed the far more permanent ghosts, were all results of the stone's influence upon the world. Because the stone existed the magic of a dying witch or wizard who feared their death deeply enough could gather together after their body cooled and their spirit crossed over, forming an imprint upon the waking world. They were not souls, but rather memories, after images of those whose refusal to accept their fates rang clearly enough in their magic that it would perform them this one final act after their departure and ensure that they would always be remembered. As such, a master of the stone could summon the residual magic imprint left by anyone and quite literally create ghosts of the dead who hadn't been so desperately afraid of their own demise, dismiss both of the previous or offer the bearer godlike influence over spirit based creatures like poltergeist, dementors, Leinthfolds, wisps and other ethereal beasties.

Together they made a powerful arsenal, but the true power of these artifacts, and especially the stone, was not one that could be felt in this world, but the next.

The world that existed… beyond the veil.

According to the book Dumbledore had locked away, and the plans that lay neatly stacked atop of it, becoming the master of death would allow free passage through the veil of death to a world where the impossible became merely inconvenient. The wand would open the door, and close it behind you. The cloak would protect you from the spirits and forces within, many of whom were apparently less than friendly as they waited for their chance to be reborn. And finally, the stone… the stone would allow you to use magic within the realm of the dead, allowing you to do things that were simply impossible in this world. Dumbledore had planned to use it to travel back in time, back beyond the reach of any time turner, escape grasping claws of causality and rescue his sister. First from the muggles who had attacked her and ruined his family and then from his boyfriend, Gellert Grindelwald.

It was actually fitting in a way, his being here. Dumbledore, the man who had made so many mistakes and either caused or allowed so much evil to grow though his good intentions had planned to damn the entire world to save his family even after he had put Harry through all of the pain and heartache of being the sacrificial champion who would finally stop his greatest mistake of all… and now it was Harry, one of the man's many victims, who would get to carry out the master plan.

Amusement bubbled in his gut, threatening to break out and alert the oft shamed and significantly more watchful ministry Unspeakables.

Reading the passages in the book once more, Harry ignored the passage about how messing with the astral plane often had unintended side effects on the mortal realm, and raised the elder wand. "ανοίγω." He said, pointing at the veil, mere inches before him. The translucent barrier rippled, the whispers behind the doorway increasing to a fevered frenzy. Ensuring that death's shroud was firmly fastened around his form and would not be soon coming off Harry strode forward through the barrier, muttering "κλείνω" as he arrived on the other side. According to the book, death got testy when the doorway was left open and was likely to arrive personally if the gate was allowed to remain open for long. The book never said what happened if she did come however, so Harry assumed that meant nobody who'd ever found out had ever survived to add to the text, hallows be damned.

Rubbing his thumb three times across the 'resurrection stone' Harry placed rock against the base of the elder wand's grip and moved the tip to the clasp of the cloak before incanting the words he'd found, both in the headmaster's notes and the book. "Eyrishon, Endless One, Keeper of the Way. Before you stands a supplicant who has passed the trials of death. With touch of death, I have struck forth, beneath shroud of death, so I have gone forth, with will of death, I did entreat, my own death, I did defeat. Through the veil I do stride, to face, reborn, the angles of time and reclaim what was lost."

As the final syllable echoed into the swirling mass of spirits some_thing_ came forth that defied description. Harry's mind hurt just trying to look at it so instead he simply kept his head down, lips touching the jewel bright silver clasp that held the cloak around him as the book suggested. As he stood, or perhaps floated there the creature observed him, a feeling akin to static, basilisk venom and oil rushed across his skin in random patterns until finally it spoke. "फिवे _**Five**_ तिमेस _**times**_ तेस्तेद _**tested, **_फिवे _**five**_ तिमेस _**times**_ त्रिउम्फन्त _**triumphant;**_ वहात _**what**_ इस _**is**_ इत _**it**_ यौ _**you **_सिक _**seek**__**, **_मोर्तल _**mortal?**_"

Blood began to leak from Harry's eyes, ears and nose and he wondered, perhaps too late, if this had been the best idea. Sure, he was facing PTS Suicidal Depression, but playing with a book authored in innocent blood upon the flayed skin of martyrs and talking with a lovcraftian horror might be a bit much, come to think of it.

Ah well, too late now! Might as well see if I can get what I came for.

"I seek to escape causality within my own time-line and reclaim the life that was stolen from me." He spoke with clear conviction. "I intend to return to the beginning and use the power and knowledge I have gained fighting this damned war to save the family that was lost to me."

"ग्रंतेद _**Granted.**_"

In retrospect Harry knew he should have been more careful in his wording, but that's why they say that hindsight is twenty/twenty. Before the creature had even finished uttering its reverberating acceptance of his demand Harry felt as if he were being squeezed through a straw. It was almost like apparating in slow motion, save that it was hot and wet and slimy. Suddenly the pressure changed and he could breathe again! Oh, sweet Merlin, air! Taking a breath had never felt so good! Sighing deeply Harry breathed in and out laboriously, his limbs weak but functional. Odd sounds were coming from all around him and he was having difficulty moving, thinking or even simply opening his eyes. Everything was blurry, and it felt as if he was being handled by Grawp again. Then there was a sharp pain somewhere near his abdomen and he screamed. For some reason his pain tolerance had gone away with his strength and his senses.

He felt a rush of static pass over him and suddenly the wet sensations were replaced by the soft press of a towel. The fibers were huge, but oddly comfortable he noticed as the giant's hands lifted him again and he was moved across the room. Presently he was lain down in the arms of another and Harry looked up to see the jade green eyes, blood red hair and smiling, crying face of Lily Potter né Evens.

Oh. Oh Merlin, bloody hell.

Well, he'd come back to the beginning alright, that was for certain! Retreating into the back of his mind, Harry let his instincts take over and began practicing his occlumency as one hand clutched Sirius finger whilst Lily held him to her breast for feeding. Honestly, what else was he supposed to do? He'd thought to come back as his fully grown 18, nearly 19 year old self wielding the wands of elder, holly and yew against the dark tosser himself and taking the one with the power to vanquish approaches as a far more literal meaning than he was about to be BLEEDING BORN!

Bollocks…

The meditation did seem to be helping a little at least. He was calming down and still able to remember most of his life, actually, strike that, all of his life with a near crystal clarity. Interesting… combine that with the familiar level of power he'd taken most of two decades to grow into… perhaps things weren't quite as bad as he'd previously thought? Remembering every individual insult and action against him in his first nine years of subjugation was unpleasant, certainly, but being able to recall every sensation and event of accidental magic throughout his life and even the first year and a half with his parents and their friends? Yeah, he could live with this.

Now, if only his ears and eyes would clear up enough that he could understand what in the bleeding hells was happening around him…

~! #$%^&*()_+

Harry looked around his new room in horror. It was pink. It had been a month since he had first woken up and between marveling at the convenience of magical self-cleaning diapers and an apparent empathic link between him and his mother he hadn't really noticed how his mother and the hospital staff had clothed him. Or her; rather. This would not do. unforeseen consequences his soft pink arse! _Damn you Eyrishon, you fucking abomination_! He thought furiously, clenching his tiny fist and shaking it while growling.

The door opened suddenly and Harry turned to see his mother rush in looking frantic. Rage turned to curiosity as she watched her mother, her beautiful mother, look around in confusion. Lily said something, but Harry was still having trouble relearning how to process sounds. His mother picked him up and stroked him, cooing softly and Harry allowed himself to relax, no reason to alarm his mum, there was really nothing the matter, at least, not yet. In the meantime he'd have to work on his wand-less magic since he couldn't just battle Voldemort straight up and changing this room would be the perfect way to start.

Over the next few months that was just what he did. Harry started small, with summoning and banishing charms because that was what he was the most familiar with and because Hermione had told him once it was the most common bit of instinctual magic kids did in any of her books, making toys fly.

~! #$%^&*()_+

August 13th 1981

Arthur Weasley looked down at his wife, wincing as she squeezed his hand particularly tightly. It had been a difficult labor, and two days late as well, but it was nearly over. He just hoped the healers finished with his dear molly-wobbles before she broke every bone in his hand. Again.

Molly cried out as another contraction hit her and the healers themselves became very excited. "I cana see tha head!" one called, "The baern's crownin!"

After that there was a flurry of activity as the healers and midwives worked to help ease his seventh out, dry it off and cut the umbilical cord. After a long series of spells the attending nurse, junior healer Patty Rosenberg came up to the bedside where Molly was still holding his hand and presented them with the child. "Here ye are, Mr and Mrs Weasley. A perfectly healthy baby boy!"

As Molly took the child something clicked in the back of Arthur's head and he paled. This would be the seventh generation of Weasleys in his line with no daughters born to the name and though four of them were dead and one a squib, he'd had six older brothers before him, none after and no sisters.

"So, wat will ye be callin him?" Patty asked the couple.

"Septimus." Arthur said, cutting over his wife before she could say anything, his voice faint. "His name will be Septimus Uthar Weasley."

~! #$%^&*()_+

September 1st 1981

Lily Potter was worried. Her daughter Ivy was always such a quiet baby… at first she'd thought it was the difference between magical children and normal ones and had been glad that she wasn't subjected to the regular horror stories of the first child terrors. The sleepless nights, constant crying, having trouble getting them to eat and then all of the stinky poop filled diapers… Self-cleaning charms on the cloth took care of that particular worry, and well recorded and published magical empathic connection between mother and child always let her know exactly what her first daughter's current issue was, but she was still quiet.

Too quiet.

As she absently brushed her daughter's perpetually messy dark red on black hair and watched her turn yet another frilly pink outfit to blue denim overalls she thought on what Dumbledore had just told them. Thirteen months ago Sybil Trelawney had made a prophesy while in Delphic trance that a child would be born in the final days of July to those who had 'thrice defied' the dark lord, and that child would have the power to defeat him. Severus had heard the first two lines, stating that the child would come, but been driven off before the last two lines stating specifically that the child would be a boy and be marked by Voldemort as an equal were uttered.

Lily wasn't certain what to think about that. On one hand, she was still furious with the man for not listening to her and joining a side she simply could not condone, even more so now that his bringing the prophesy to Voldemort had caused him to target them specifically! But... as Dumbledore had told them last night when he helped them set up to go immediately under the fidellius charm, Severus had come specifically to Dumbledore and offered his life, his service and the warning that his master and patron had decided to target them!

She and James had indeed faced Voldemort three times in mortal combat and escaped with their lives, as had her best friend Alice and her husband Frank Longbottom, Ivy and Neville were born within hours of each other just on either side of midnight separating July 30th and 31st… but Ivy was a girl! Not a boy! She had been so happy when she and Alice had been due to have their children the same day, they'd planned this since second year, one of them would have a daughter, the other a son, neither had much cared which, but they would grow up together, go to Hogwarts together just as they had and marry making her and Alice sisters in law as well as in bond.

And now Voldemort was after the pair of them. Or rather, he was after Ivy and possibly Neville. Severus had apparently come from his master's service not because of the prophesy, or his part in setting the madman on a pair of children, but because the dark lord had become convinced that the prediction meant Ivy and in his attacking Lily might be hurt as collateral. Not that James might die as well, or that Ivy would almost definitely die, but that she, Lily Potter né Evans, might get hurt. Should she be flattered that he still cared for her so deeply that he'd risk that… that… _thing_'s wrath to save her, or hate him all the more for setting Tom on them, specifically, in the first place and not caring that her loving husband and beautiful innocent daughter might die in the process?

And then there was her daughter's obvious power.

Lily's first memory of experiencing instinctual magic when she was five years old, though that might not have been her true first and she hardly knew what it was at that point. She had been having trouble reaching one of her more favored picture books because her mother had gotten tired of calling her to dinner every day and put it on a high shelf. She had wanted the book so badly and then in a fevered rush of static and adrenaline half of the shelf was pouring down on her. All small paper bound books, but still quite the 'in your face' experience that you were more than you might have thought.

It had been mere weeks later when she had first been able to make it happen again and from there she had learned how to do all sorts of things. Floating down from great heights, making flowers bloom or close, directing animals to flock to and sing with her like that Yank movie Snow White, summon things to her hand or put them back where she'd gotten them without every touching them and so many other things. And then she had met Severus…

She shook off her train of thought. From her research years ago in Hogwarts five was an exceptional age to first begin showing magic and, perhaps because they simply accepted it as a fact of life, unheard of for active control of her abilities. Ivy had been doing these things almost since she was _born_… What did it mean? She had her theories of course: Dumbledore was a half-blood, his mother muggle-born like her and his father the last of an ancient and noble wizarding clan. Tom was too, only in reverse, his father being, at least according to Dumbledore, a muggle noble and landowner just north of London. Or at least he had been until the Second World War when he and his family had mysteriously died together on the same night under suspicion of poisoning. Voldemort's mother, a squib named Merope Gaunt, was the last direct descendant of Salazar Slytherin whose line had been so pure obsessed they had married cousins, siblings and parents just to keep the bloodline 'strong'.

This disturbing level of power in Dumbledore, Voldemort and now her daughter was part of a growing theory she'd held since first hearing pure-blood rhetoric on the train ride in. Pure-bloods believed in the power of magical blood, a concept she'd never liked, but couldn't actively dispute as throughout school magical power, with noticeable exceptions, did tend to go pure blood, half-blood, muggle-born. _However _while pure blood did lend itself to power, the purer pure-bloods tended to have power equal to the majority of the muggle-borns' and according to the Hogwarts library Genealogy texts the purer and closer intertwined a family was the more they produced squibs who had **no** power.

Her conclusion was that while pure-bloods did indeed have reason to be smug about their long magical lineages and combining multiple wizarding lines did indeed gift you with power and skill beyond your fellow man, whereas marrying muggles and less powerful wizards meant less skilled powerful children, they simply didn't understand enough biology for that alone to save them. Low birth rates and inbreeding were stealing their power just as easily as consorting with, ahem, lesser creatures... The Potters for instance were a primarily pure-blood line which stretched for nearly three thousand years on the main vault tapestry and had been seven generations pure before James had married her. And now their daughter was bending spoons at six months, deliberately transfiguring her cloths and charming her room different colors at one year.

And now all of this meant that Voldemort was convinced that the prophesy might yet be true. A child born with the power to defeat him. Even if he did know that it was supposed to be a boy and not a girl Tom Riddle would still likely come for them, they hadn't exactly been secretive about Ivy's unusual and perhaps even unnatural power. Born as the seventh month died, parents thrice defied and power worthy of anyone's notice… the only thing that might stay his hand would be the two lines he'd missed about marking his equal. Though that did lead to another question, why wait a year to care about the prophesy?

~! #$%^&*()_+

October fifth, 1981

So that was it, Harry thought bitterly as he watched his parents and their friends come out of Lily's ritual room. Sirius is taking heat from the corpse munchers, the secret keeper has been changed and no amount of crying at the sight of Peter for over a year had managed to change it. Bloody hell. At least his wand-less magic seemed to be going well, not that it was particularly hard once you got used to it, it was just a lot more tiring was all. Doing magic with a wand was like plugging a hose and spray nozzle into a river-fed reservoir. Different spells could easily be likened to different nozzle settings and the amount of power you could put into them through the wand was the size of the hose or the how far you'd squeezed the nozzle lever. With a wand you'd have to throw around high powered spells for most of the day to ever be in danger of running out, most of that because of simple core magic regeneration.

Casting wandlessly by instinct and force of will however was like taking that same reservoir and cracking open the floodgates. The amount of power you could pour into a single act was enormously higher, even going so far as to leave you magically exhausted in a single push because like opening the gates of a dam the magic just spilled out everywhere. The effect of this was like wielding a pair of double edged swords; on one hand you could put incredible and literally unblockable power into any single act save that doing so was a quick way to become exhausted and useless and with the other hand you didn't need spells to confine you as your will was the ultimate expression of that power, except that acting this way meant you needed an incredible will and focus to not lose most of the magic to random, wasteful and potentially disastrous thoughts as it crashed over and through items and shields like the tide as it seeks to fulfill its casters wishes.

Power and versatility versus endurance and precision. Hammer or scalpel.

Of course it was far more complicated than that, but the description still fit. Wanded magic actually had more uses because while instinctual casting went think, want, have; it still relied on what you believed yourself to be capable of and what you could imagine accomplishing, whereas with a wand so long as you could find the right book you had thousands of years of other people helping you think, want and imagine what you could have; quite often including things you couldn't have dreamed up even in your wildest moments of fear or fancy. It was also the reason Tom and Albus appeared to be so much more powerful than everybody else, why Harry had always considered Hermione, magically weak though she may be, his better. For (though perhaps not to) an unintelligent and uninquisitive person, magic was hopelessly backwards in comparison to modern muggles, but for people like those three, the possibilities were endless. Any problem, no matter how great or how petty could be solved by a simple convenient spell, it was just a matter of having the right one in your mental or physical library. Luna once told him that she always tried to do eleven impossible things before breakfast, simply as a matter of routine.

For now though he was simply practicing, in wait for the end of the month when Tom was to attack and do his level best to tear the Potters world apart.

"Mum!" Harry cried, using his power to lift off the ground with streamers of golden fire and fly across the room towards the redhead. Landing in his mother's arms 'Ivy' glared at Peter's retreating back.

~! #$%^&*()_+

October 15th evening.

"You look troubled, Padfoot, what's up?" James asked his best friend as the man left the room James wife and daughter were still playing in. He had to admit be being regularly amazed by the pair of them. Lily had always been unusually skilled with wand-less magic and the marauders had learned a bit of it here and there because not only could they not stand to be upstaged, but it was positively useful for performing pranking magic without the professors being able to check your wand for the spell. Even so, the sheer degree of skill to which Ivy had inherited her mother's talent still blew him away.

"Ivy asked me a question, James, one I'm still trying to wrap my head around." The Black Heir Apparent replied slowly.

"Oh?" said girl's father asked, feeling a welling of pride at how the girl was already able to ask coherent questions, a skill not normally developed into mid two or three years old. "What did she say?"

Sirius laid a hand on either shoulder and stared at him solemnly. "She asked 'why rat take paffoos light?'"

Raising a brow in confusion James asked the obvious. "She thinks a rat took a light? How could a ra… wait, Peter hasn't transformed in front of her, has he?"

"All four of us have, you know that." Sirius told him, rolling his eyes "She even calls Remus 'wolf' or 'woof' when she isn't calling him Mooie."

"And she thinks Peter took a light? Any idea what that's referring to?"

"No idea," the former secret keeper replied with a shrug. "It's not an object, nothings been stolen and I can't imagine Peter doing so anyways. It can't be my magic because I can still cast spells and there's no damage to my core. The only thing I can think of that Peter might have taken recently would be my duties as secret keeper, though how anyone, even a super-magical toddler, could see that is beyond me."

"You can't be serious?"

Sirius cracked a sudden grin and began to open his mouth but deflated into an easy smirk at James' glare. "It makes as much sense as anything else. This is the little girl who calls your trophy snitches fly lights…"

James pinched the bridge of his nose and groaned in exasperation. "I _will_ teach her to call them snitches one of these days." The nearsighted brunette growled, face caught halfway between a grin and a grimace. "Still, going out on a far out limb that she is referring to your Fidellius duties transferring to Peter, I'm not sure how I'm still surprised. She's been pulling toys across the room since she was four months old and Lily's been complaining about how she's rejecting the princess motif by charming colors and transfiguring her clothes for months. Did I tell you about how I caught her walking across the ceiling after a butterfly last week? And you've seen her fly to Lily under her own power on occasion, she's going to be a natural Quidditch player, I can just tell!"

"So," Sirius said, somewhat loudly, indicating he wanted a change of subject, "How fares our fiery enchantress? Evans' Enchantments push back any more magical boundaries since my last assignment?"

"Well, with all of this free time we're both finding on our hands she's begun messing with vanishing cabinets and…"

~! #$%^&*()_+

October 31st night.

Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, moved through the streets of Godrics Hollow twitching with the effort to not start cursing the entire street into oblivion. Tonight marked the beginning of Samhain, one of the holiest of wizarding holidays and here the muggles ran back and forth in their profane secular celebration of the candy gods. All Saints Day was supposed to be in April; not tainting his people's celebration, thought that would hardly have made the Catholic blasphemy any less profane…

Samhain was the old Celtic celebration of the harvest, a time to bring in your crops, choose which livestock to slaughter for the winter, mourn the dead and celebrate life. Beginning at dusk of the 31st, ending at dawn of the first and peaking at midnight, it was the night when the barriers between the shadow-lands of the Fey and the natural world were at their thinnest, allowing magic to be at its most potent. Indeed it was, traditionally, the time at which heroes began their quests, villains kicked off their master plans, the time the story _truly_ began. Halloween was a day of choices, choices of life and death, of good and evil. Even the mundane recognize it, deep in their bones. They dress as ghosts and skeletons, as heroes and villains, maidens and monsters. Deep down inside, they remember the roots of Halloween. It was a night of power that was mostly forgotten.

But not to him.

Or to the Potters it seemed, as he could see a twin row of bonfires in their backyard as he approached the house they thought hidden beneath the fidellius. Fingering Gryffindor's dagger in his belt, the virtually indestructible item he intended to form into his final Horcrux, he passed through their gate approached the door. It was fitting in a way, that most of the lost arts that involved Samhain involved living sacrifices, with the ritual already primed to create his final soul shard this night would truly be the ending of a great many things. Killing the Potter's brat would put an end to that pathetic prophesy that was giving his enemies hope, create his final Horcrux securing his immortal power, and the sacrifice of an innocent child would serve to give him the power boost he needed to make his ascension to emperor of the British wizarding world incontestable.

Pausing before the gate he took a step to the side and looked in on the happy couple. James Potter sat on the couch, wand behind one ear, laughing while his wife and child played together on the floor. Sneering at the scene he moved over to the door and made ready to blast it open. An evil overlord he may be, but there was no reason not to be polite. He'd make it quick for the Potters, take them out before they could really realize what was happening. Once the husband and child were dead the mud-blood would be sent off to Severus, let it not be said he didn't reward loyalty and service. Yes, things were coming together nicely.

They had not drawn the curtains; he saw them quite clearly in their little sitting room, the tall black-haired man in his glasses, was now making puffs of colored smoke erupt from his wand for the amusement of the small black-haired child in blue pajamas. The child was laughing and trying to catch the smoke, to grab it in its small fist...

The porch gate creaked a little as he pushed it closed, but James Potter did not hear. His white hand pulled out the wand beneath his cloak and pointed it at the door, which burst open. He was over the threshold as James came sprinting into the hall. It was easy, too easy, he had even forgotten his wand on the couch...

"Lily, take Ivy and go! It's him! Go! Run! I'll hold him off!"

Hold me off, without a wand in his hand?... He laughed before casting the curse... "Avada Kedavra!" The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the banisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut... pathetic. How was it this man had faced him three times before now and still breathed? Well, that was corrected now, wasn't it?

With a shake of his head he turned his attention towards the stairs. He could hear Severus' prize screaming from the upper floor, trapped, but as long as she was sensible, she, at least, had nothing to fear... He climbed the steps, listening with faint amusement to her attempts to barricade herself in... She had no wand either... How stupid they were, and how trusting, thinking that their safety lay in friends, that weapons could be discarded even for moments...

He forced the door open, cast aside the chair and boxes hastily piled against it with one lazy wave of his wand ... and there she stood, the child in her arms. At the last sight of him, she dropped something into the crib behind her and threw her arms wide, as if this would help, as if in shielding him from sight she hoped to be chosen instead...

"Not Ivy, not Ivy, please not Ivy!"

"Stand aside, you silly girl ... stand aside now."

And yet still the mud-blood blubbered her useless plees at him. He was about to offer her one final chance when the world turned sideways.

~! #$%^&*()_+

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	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Most of this belongs to Lady Rowling, she of the ridiculous bank account. All extrapolations and alterations are mine, but really that just means I still cant make any money off this. Cry for me, will you?

Chapter two.

by Byakugan789

Harry howled in impotent pain and fury as his mother hurtled upstairs, taking his admittedly eighteen month old female body up towards the nursery. This was not how it was supposed to go! He had struck a bargain! Eyrishon had sent him back and he was to change fate, escape causality! It had made him a girl for Morganna's sake, why was it all happening the same as before?! He had trained damn it!

Closing his eyes as his mother set him down in the crib he began to breath deep calming breaths and watched his mother futilely try to barricade the door. It wasn't going to work, he remembered that, Voldemort had hardly even paused between his wand and his power last time. The evil Hermione probably hadn't even taken the time to think of an incantation before simply wielding his magic as was his will. But there had been one thing that had given the man pause.

Snape.

In Tom's willingness to reward his servant he had taken enough time to lazily offer Lily two entire chances to step aside and give him up, if his mother was as willing to sacrifice herself for her daughter as she had been for her son then he would have time, little, but just enough, to strike. A flashpoint Dumbledore had called it, one moment, one truly pivotal event in which everything could change.

It would have to be enough.

Setting his mind to the ready and drawing upon his magic Harry watched fascinated as Lily rushed around the room, a book in one hand and various boxes or pieces of furniture in the other. The Tome was open and she was chanting feverishly as she moved like a woman possessed. Perhaps this was the magic that had allowed her sacrifice to save him? So, so many had died before without anything like him happening, many mothers had even sacrificed themselves in the protection of others, but only in the old folk stories and his own had such a thing ever actually mattered.

But there wasn't enough time left to think about that, with a crash the door flew open, all of his mother's efforts to impede it for naught. Harry watched as she threw the book aside and turned to face Tom, her arms wide as she sought to shield him with her body.

"Not Ivy," she cried as Harry tensed "not Ivy, please not Ivy!" He had only seconds now, it was time to act!

"Stand aside," came Tom's high cold voice as smoky blue light began to gather in Harry's little fists "you silly girl ... stand aside now."

Harry struck.

Four ribbons of light, shimmering gold, ethereal cyan, vivid violet and a dark angry red; leapt from his tiny body and struck Riddle, simultaneously curving around his mother and pulling her off to the side. Voldemort himself flew backwards, out of the door and into the wall just beyond. The air between them rippled and shuddered under a rainbow stream of raw magic from the fully developed adult core of a powerful wizard. Harry looked into Voldemort's eyes and saw not fear, but surprise. He had not expected 'her' to be of any true threat, had probably not even believed the prophesy till now.

Harry watched as, in those eternal seconds, the dark lord began to resist; pushing against Harry's magic with his own and struggling to point his wand into the room. _Damn, the wand!_ Harry thought viciously, _how had he kept it? I never manage to keep my wand when I'm being thrown around!_ Changing tactics he lowered one hand slightly from their positions pointing palms forward as if pushing Riddle back physically and made a grasping motion before pulling back. His instinctual magic responded in kind but the result was something neither of them had expected.

Voldemort, his right side suddenly free of the awful pressure had swung his arm forward to point his wand at the little savior only for the presence to return before the words could even form on his lips or in his mind, only this time pulling his arm forward. Instead of helping him or relieving Tom of his wand as Harry had intended the sudden reversal of forces caused a shearing force which ripped Tom's whole arm off, wand still in hand, and sent it barreling towards the crib. The lower knuckles, whiter than normal in their death-grip on the yew strip slamming into the Harry's forehead, bowling him over.

Blackness overtook him and the next thing Harry knew he was being cradled by a sobbing Lily Potter. Wriggling in her arms Harry turned his female body so that he could see the rest of the room, a task made slightly easier by the fact that his mother was covered head to toe in warm sticky blood. In Lily's other hand, the one not holding her 'daughter' was the splintered remains of a small, wooden, one shelf book rack which she was still raising up and down feebly before repeatedly dropping it on the beaten, broken and bloody remains of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Exhausted, disappointed and furious Harry decided he'd have to be content with having saved at least one parent and hope things went better with Sirius this time. Letting his head fall against his mother's chest Harry 'Ivy' Potter went to sleep.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Sirius landed in the front yard of the Potters house with a thump and the roar of his motorcycle cut out abruptly, but he hardly noticed, already vaulting off of the vehicle and speeding towards the house. His mind a whirl with horrible possibilities his heart clenched painfully as he saw the open doorway. Even if the wards hadn't been screaming at him for the last ten minutes that alone would have made him suspicious, the air was far to cold to simply leave the door open like that, especially with how little Ivy reacted to the cold…

Reaching the porch did nothing good to his blood pressure as he saw that the door had been torn apart by some unknown force, possibly a bombarda curse or maybe the wards violently failing to keep out a powerful, hostile wizard. He made it into the sitting room seconds later and saw a sight that crippled him. James Charles Potter lay there in the entry to the sitting room, his eyes wide and glassy with panic but motionless, his chest still and lips turning blue. Dead but unmarked. The killing curse. He and James had been best friends since they had first met on the train ride to Hogwarts seeing him dead felt as if someone had torn off his arm and begun beating him with it.

As the grief of the situation threatened to overwhelm him another thought intruded upon his pain, what of Lily? Was she still in the house? Was she too dead? He'd probably kill himself if he found her body too, lying somewhere nearby like James… but maybe she'd gotten away? He had to know. Waving his wand he concentrated briefly on the words _hominum revelio_ and his mind was suddenly filled with the knowledge of three more humans above and to the right of him. Someone was still in the house, up the stairs. He had to see.

Lurching to his feet he charged for the stairs, supporting himself upon the walls, knees simultaneously weak and incredibly strong in his grief and desperation to _know_. He passed the landing and turned the corner to see further destruction. There was a body lying in the doorway and a large bloodstain on the wall. His heart clenched at this, but the legs pointing out in the hall were covered in black robes rather than jeans or cashmere. Lurching forward Sirius ran towards the room he vaguely recognized as Ivy's nursery and caught himself on the door frame. Inside lay the bleeding mangled body of the families attacker, swathed in black robes, with paper white skin, stained liberally with blood where Lily sat sobbing and absentmindedly raising what looked like a book end only to drop it weakly on the shattered skull if the insensate, bleeding out and likely very dead wizard.

"Lily!" Sirius let out in a strangled voice. "Oh, Lily, thank Merlin! James is... is..."

Lily looked up at him looking lost for a moment before she latched onto him and began sobbing anew. "He's dead Siri" Lily mumbled through the tears and into his chest as they held each other "James told me to take Ivy and run, but Ivy... Ivy got him in the end! James is dead. V-Vold-Tom is dead... how did he even get here Sirius?" She shook her head and sobbed harder. "No, there's only one way he could have gotten here, Peter's probably dead too." She sniffled. "Or being held under torture."

Sirius nodded, grief over James' death slowly being tempered by the warm weight and words of Lily and Ivy clutched in his arms. James... Peter... Half of the Marauders gone... now there was only him and captain doom and gloom, Mooney. "Lily, do you think you'll be able to get to my safe-house? I need to see if I can find Peter's body." Sirius said, his voice sounding dead even to himself. Lily sniffed and clutched him tighter. "Alright..." he said quietly "alright, we'll go together."

As Sirius and Lily supported each other our of the house and towards Sirius' motorcycle there was a fluttering roar as if fire was passing through the air and Hagrid came in to land on an enormous Thestral, the hooves clopping to the ground. "James! Lily! Are the two of you alright? Dumbledore said his instermens were goin barmy! Wa's goin on?"

Instead of answering though, Lily broke out sobbing again. Sirius helped her over to his bike before letting go and turning toward the old gamekeeper. "James'... James is... dead... Hagrid." Sirius said as the half-giant stumped forward heavily.

"Sirius? No... NO! James can' be dead! What in the blazes 'appened!?"

"I don't know." Sirius admitted. "The wards told me about dark curses being cast and I turned around and headed back as fast as I could. From what you said I suppose its same for you. But Voldemort's dead. J-james is dead. Peter's either dead or being held by Voldemort's Death-Eaters. I could use your help to collect their bodies."

Hagrid gaped at Sirius and an all too familiar look of loss swept across the behemoths face. Glittering black eyes closed, leaking large tears and he tilted back his head and roared. After he was done the two men came together and began talking, their voices harsh with recent pain. "Wha der ya need me ter do?" The half-giant asked.

"I'm taking Lily to my apartment, It's under the Fidellius and a few nastier curse wards against intruders. I was planning on bringing you, Lily and the Marauders and maybe a few of the order over for keying in the next week, but with this..." Sirius shook his head. "One Marauder dead, a second dead or captured... Jame's house compromised... And Lily needs me. If you could help I still need to collect James and Voldemort's bodies and find out what happened to Peter. I can't for the life of me figure out how anyone knew he'd taken my place a secret keeper."

"L-lil Pettie t-took your place?" Hagrid asked, sounding lost. Dumbledore had told everyone that Sirius had been the secret keeper... so why? "Why?"

Sirius barked out a hollow laugh. "Because we never expected anyone would think of him. Hell, maybe they didn't either... Lily thinks he may be held under torture. Peter's never been a strong person, whoever took him probably didn't even know what a gold mine they had until he'd squeaked."

"Righ" Hagrid nodded sadly, a pained look on his face "Fer his sake, it's probably be'er ifin e's dead then. Dem death eaters kin be nasty. Dumbledore sent me ter evacuate Lily, James and Ivy, bu iffin yer promise ter take Dumbledore inna yer wards soon I can just take him tha bodies. He'll wanna know how Tom died fer certain."

"Thanks Rubes." Sirius said wearily and turned back to his bike. Reaching into his pocket he removed the sidecar but Lily shook her head. Sirius understood, Lily had always been very tactile in her emotions, either fury, compassion, love or grief. Her feeling safe would equate to being able to hold onto him and her daughter throughout the ride, not being huddled into the sidecar, clutching Ivy and crying to herself.

As Hagrid squeezed himself through the Potters front door Sirius took off into the night, the roar of him motorcycle sounding more to his hears like the cry of a wounded beast than its usually soothing mechanical purr.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Tom Marvolo Riddle felt a sense of movement and tried to moan. But everything was too fuzzy to moan. What had he been doing? He remembered a sense of purpose, a bit of excitement, a flash of surprise and rage, brutal rage. But beyond that... all was pain. But that seemed to be numbing some now. Blinding pain was melting away to smothering fog. Was this what it was like to be dead with your soul unable to move on? It wasn't as bad as he had thought it might be... Still, bad enough, if he was dead and still conscious it meant two things. He had been successful in achieving immortality, but he obviously hadn't gone far enough.

There was another flare of pain slightly below and in front of his conscious thoughts... did that mean he was not in fact dead? Or had that priest at the orphanage been right and Lucifer's devils had come for him now that he was no longer strictly on the mortal coil? His existence grew fuzzier and for a moment he thought he could feel a slight breeze... inside of his head? He struggled to hold onto his thoughts, but even they were slowly slipping away as the open wound on his skull and his magically enhance body slowly lead to brain death. The central core of Voldemort would eventually separate from it's body and become a dark shadow haunting the Headmasters office, but that piece of the dark lord would not become a problem for many, many years to come.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Severus Snape gazed at the brand on his arm, open mouthed in shock. It had gone from black as fresh ash, and about as painful, to a slight gray shadow on his left forearm. It... but... he couldn't believe it... the prophesy... it hadn't been... real... had it? His master certainly hadn't believed so, willing to take out the child merely because the disclosure of the mad seer's words had been giving people hope... But his lord was now... weak? Defeated? Severus would dare say dead, but then why would the mark still be there? It had been their lords ultimate tool for keeping track of his followers and it's simple existence was linked to the mans own magic. If he had died then it should have faded entirely.

He wondered, a thick tremor of fear running through his blood, if Lily had survived. He had seen Lily's little Brat, she looked too much like James and too little like Lily for Severus to give the slightest damn on that count, and would be absolutely gleeful if James had died, but the thought that Lily might not have made it out of the confrontation filled him with dread.

Still though, something had happened to his lord, and from this small nugget of information it wasn't anything good. Perhaps the brat really had been the power needed to destroy Tom...

Getting up, the sallow skinned man made his way from his newly appointed dungeon/spying post and headed for Dumbledore's office. He could weasel information out of the old coot by providing his mark as evidence.

As he reached the stair case leading up to the headmasters office his breath began to come out white and he could feel a palpable sense of dread in the area. A dementor? But what would one of them be doing in Hogwarts, let-alone the Headmasters office? Perhaps this had been a contingency? One of the many plans he was not allowed to know about in case he proved not be be able to keep out the world famous Legillimancer Dumbledore. Deciding it would be entertaining to watch the wrinkled old coot get his soul sucked out he proceeded past the stone gargoyle and up the stone escalator. As he approached though he began to have his doubts, for all the frigid and psychically active atmosphere he was not being forced to remember and relive any of his life's humiliations... something his occlumancy should have dimmed, not erased all together.

Pulling out his wand, so that if Dumbledore was winning it could look like he's rushed in to help, Snape opened the heavy, smooth oak door. The wizened mage stood near his fireplace, a pair of bodies at his feet, Hagrid huddling in a corner and the shadows far thicker than they ever should have had any right to be. Dumbledore was wielding two wands in a manner similar to the muggle cheerleaders he had once spied on not so many years ago. Bolts, arcs and webs of light shot out of both of them in and effort to contain what looked like and amorphous mass of smoke wafting from one of the robed bodies on the ground.

As Albus spared him a quick glance the web of light faltered and the sourceless sense of malice spiked again, making it hard for Snape to breathe and causing Hagrid in the corner to begin shivering even more violently.

Moving over to the headmaster Snape stared in wonder at the ruined body of his first and apparently former, master. His arm had been torn off, his skull caved in and showing torn and weeping brain matter and blood everywhere. The dark lord had long boasted of his immortality, could this evil shadow be somehow connected to that? The only other explanation was that Dumbledore, lemon sucking poof of a leader of the light had cast a curse on the man to tear Tom's soul from his body and, in Snapes mind at least, that would just be plain out of character.

Regardless of HOW, Snape watched on awe as the men before him fought for supremacy, light vs dark, heat vs bone chilling cold, focused fury vs primal mindless malice. Eventually the web of light managed to contain the shadow to a shelf of the headmasters cabinet and doors locked shut with a burst of golden red light and a cry of phoenix song. That done the aged, sweat drenched headmaster turned his wand on Severus and spoke. "Take a seat, why don't you, my dear boy."

Taking in the second body at the old mans feet Snape quickly crushed his nearly hysterical glee behind his occlumancy barriers and took one of the proffered seats. "I'd come to tell you about the fading of my dark mark, Headmaster," Snape offered quickly, "but from your recent display, the point seems moot. He's defeated then? Is Lily OK?"

Dumbledore looked at him, expression unreadable for several minutes before answering. "Tom Riddle underestimated the love of a mother for her daughter." Dumbledore said, his voice grave. "And while I do not entirely approve of her methods, she tore him apart for the offense. You would do well to remember that when next you see her, Severus."

Snape glanced at the ragged nature of the wounds and turned white as parchment. Those weren't spell wounds, even bludgeoner or blasting type. If he were to judge the situation based on the headmasters words and his own machinations, then his master had tried to spare his Lily as promised and the redhead had literally torn the Dark Lords arm off and beaten him to the very edge of death with it... the muggle way. He wasn't sure whether to be smug, or very VERY scared. It was as beautifully ironic as it was terrifying. The dark lords message was one of hate and it was his own love for the muggleborn 'enemy' that had allowed this victory. Furthermore, the greatest dark lord on record, (though Snape personally felt that was debatable having actually studied wizarding history) had been defeated without the use of magic at all, but by the strength of a woman whose love lent her another brand of deep and powerful hate... such a unifying contradiction, such a beautiful irony...

"In that case Headmaster, I must get back to my... other friends. There will doubtless be quite a bit of chaos over this and you'll need constant updates." Waiting only for the old man's nod he swept out of the room.

He wasn't interested in spying on his friends however, he already knew how most of them would react. The bulk of the dark lords army would scatter to the winds, the funds holding them in line no longer flowing, the upper echelons would be holding the ministry in check to maximize the chaos until they could play it into a means of exoneration, the fanatics would go on pointless and pointlessly violent terror missions trying to figure out what the Light had done to their god and the bulk of the wizarding world would be dropping their guard and partying the moment the dust had settled enough for them to understand what had happened.

All Severus wanted to do was find Lily and collect his reward.

She would be grieving and he would swoop in to comfort her. They had been friends for nearly seven years.., only losing their way when James had driven him to step out of bounds. She would be deep enough in her grief though that she wouldn't push him away until he'd had the chance to become her emotional anchor and then, well... if he couldn't count on emotions... he wasn't one of the youngest potions masters in Europe without reason.

Although, Lily being one of the others would mean he'd need to be careful...

For the rest of the night Snape searched high and Low for Lily Evens, quietly spreading the story of her defeat of the dark lord though subtle use the of the Imperious curse. The celebrations would mask his efforts to find her and in there fervor the mob might even help him, giving him another thing to save his lady love from, further deepening their connection.

He smirked slightly as he forced the weak willed and excitable Daedalus Diggle into the Leaky Cauldron. It would certainly be interesting to see how the wizarding world reacted to having a female and a muggleborn as their champion. Interesting indeed...

~! #$%^&*()_+

"How long?" Lily looked up into Sirius' face, confused.

"What?"

Sirius gestured at the slight bloating of her stomach. "You're pregnant again." Sirius said simply. "I was concerned he might have hurt you before you before you and Ivy... did what you did. So I cast a series of medical charms while you were eating. How far along are you?"

Lily crossed her arms under her breasts, looked over at the crib Ivy had been laid in and lent back into Sirius chest, shivering. "Three months," she whispered "plus or minus one, no longer than four." Then she broke down in sobs again, pressing into Sirius warmth and arms for comfort. "James and I had wanted more kids..." she whispered, hiccuping "and now he'll never get to see them. Never watch Ivy grow up..." she tried to say more, but nothing made any sense even to her ears. The arms around her shoulders tightened and began rocking her slowly Lulling her slowly to sleep.

When she again awoke, near noon on November first she felt cold somehow, as if something terrible had happened while she was out.

Shivering, she looked around, trying to discern what was wrong. Then it hit her in a wave. James was dead, Peter was probably dead or had betrayed them, and Sirius... where was Sirius? Standing up shakily she took in her surroundings. She wasn't in her house, the room was unfamiliar, Sirius' place she remembered, and Ivy was standing in a crib, looking intently at her. She felt another wave of dread foreboding and understood this time it was not her own.

"Dog chase rat!" Ivy said in a high little voice more appropriate to a three year old than one 18 months.

For a moment Lily once again felt pride in her daughter being like her, learning speech and reading at such an early age, even more her magic. Then the babe's words broke through to her and she went cold. "Dog chase rat! Boom!"

"Ivy, what do you mean, dear?" she asked frantically, falling to her knees at the edge of the crib. "Which dog and rat, where? What boom?"

Ivy looked at her for a moment and then Lily felt tiny hands press against the sides of her face and an image forced itself into her mind. Sirius and Peter stood in an alley in London, outside of Peter's flat. Peter was fatter than she remembered but looked unhurt. He shouted to the street that Sirius had betrayed their friend, her husband to Voldemort and then the street blew up. There was blood and smoke and screaming. Then Peter turned into a rat and left his cloths behind, heading for the sewers. Red robed Aurors arrived seconds later and took Sirius away. In the background a blond man smirked and the scene changed, showing Sirius on a boat to Azkaban Prison, Dementors swooping around. As one swept in close Lily pulled back in horror, looking at her daughter. Could Ivy be a seer?

"Hurry!" Ivy chirped again. "Dog chase rat!"

Standing jerkily Lily rushed for the door to the bedroom, wrenching it open to see the main room of the Penthouse apartment the white sheep of the blacks had acquired for himself. "Dippy!" she shrieked and with a crack the little elf appeared before her. "Dippy, please, I know I can't order you, but please watch Ivy while I'm gone. You can even use my magic to defend her if anything goes wrong!" She said hurriedly, taking the elf's hand in hers.

"What's is being wrong, mistress friend Lily?" the little creature asked.

"Sirius is in trouble and I need to find him! Please, take care of Ivy for me while I'm gone!"

The elves eyes bulged. "But ifing the great master paddy is being in trouble, Dippy should be helping mistress finds master Paddy! She is being the masters elf afters all!"

Lily's own eyes widened, having forgotten the many powers of house elves in her own panic. She hadn't allowed James to use them, seeing as it was slave labor and thus of the bad, even if they really were just golems. "Could you take me to him?"

Dippy nodded and with a crack they were gone.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Sirius watched as Lily stopped shuddering and her breathing evened out. She really was beautiful, even in her grief. James had chosen well.

He sighed.

But James was dead now, and by Sirius's own actions as well. Not directly of course, he'd scarcely ever imagined hurting his best friend, and then never in such a manner. There had been a fair few jokes the pair played on each that the Grim animagus just thought were plain off color, like when Potter had given him and Remus both droughts of sleep and confusion before tucking them into the same bed naked. Sirius shuddered, both happy and horrified at the memory. His revenge on James had been epic for that one.

No, his fault in this case was his little bit of genius in switching Secret Keepers from himself to Pettigrew. Somehow word had gotten out that he, Sirius Black, was the Potters Secret Keeper and he had been feeling the heat, enough that he had decided to set up his apartment with a Fidellius held by Lily herself. As an extra measure of protection however he had suggested to the couple that they make Peter their secret keeper so that should anything happen to him, Sirius, they wouldn't in fact get the real secret keeper leaving them and his god-daughter safe. It was a perfect plan, after all, who would suspect cowardly, magically weak and, while not untalented, but utterly lazy Peter Pettigrew? No one of course! The idea was just so ludicrous it was genius! Peter could hardly be counted on to brew a potion right because doing so would require effort! So who would honestly go looking to him to keep such an important ward up?

But someone had.

Or, more likely, had simply captured their poor tag-along for a couple coppers of information and ended up torturing entire gold bars out of him by accident.

Given the likely chain of events Sirius had gone to Peters house expecting to find the place broken into and the chupakabra animagus missing, or emblazoned with the dark mark and his body laying there dead in some fashion or another. Maybe, if Peter had been particularly lucky he would be limping around cleaning up his thoroughly messed domicile and applying potions and charms to his wounds. Nobody could really expect Peter to hold out against torture, but that was part of why no one should have ever even expected to come to him to settle the issue.

He had not expected to find his friend, whole and unblemished or even perturbed, sitting at his kitchen table eating waffles with blueberry syrup and humming himself a melancholy tune.

"Peter!? The bloody fucking hell is going on here!?" The rat froze and rather than turning around and trying to explain himself, exploded into motion, throwing his little table at Sirius and running for the door.

Sirius blasted the plasterboard and aluminum table out reflex, earning a squeak from Peter as the pudgy little man scurried out of the house. Black stood there stunned for a minute struggling to understand what he was seeing. Peter was afraid of him. And unharmed. Visibly at least. The only evidence of a fight was what he had already done here with the table. Could... could Peter have given up without much a fight? As that would justifiably be seen as a betrayal Sirius could see how his friend might be fearful of reprisal, Sirius had always been known for his temper... Shaking himself out of his stupor he chased after the fleeing man, who was already halfway down the street by now, if he hadn't apparated away. Getting quickly into his stride he ruthlessly shoved aside thoughts that Peter might have willingly betrayed the Potters to the dark lord. That... couldn't be possible... could it?

Bursting out into the ally he saw that Peter was indeed still running? "Peter, please! What happened!? If they tortured you then just say it!" he shouted after the man. "We never expected you to hold under that, it's forgivable even! Just stop RUNNING!"

And Peter did. Standing in the mouth of the ally, his wand drawn and pointed at the ground Peter turned to look at him. Fear and fury were his expressions. Sirius looked on in confusion and mounting horror. "SIRIUS!" the little man screamed in a high rattling tenor "YOU BETRAYED LILY AND JAMES, HOW COULD YOU?"

"What are yo... no. Peter NO!" Then, with skill his friend had never before demonstrated, Peter Petigrew sent a silent motionless blasting curse of incredible power at the ground behind him, somehow shaping the blast so that it detonated away from him rather than taking him with it. Sirius watched in utter shock as the traitor, for he knew that now and how in Merlin's name could he have been so blind, cut off his own finger with a severing charm and transformed into a large gray ratlike creature before escaping into the sewers.

"Huh... heh... ha... hahahahahehehehehahahahahaHAHAHAHA!" Sirius laughed and laughed, just standing there, the sheer incredulity and horror of it all crashing down upon his shoulders. His best friend dead, the dark lord defeated, Lily and Ivy themselves having only escaped by inches and insanity, and his friend. The companion, the minion, James' little fan-boy stooge. The one who had caused the most damage in the end had been the one he had never suspected and yet... and yet when he looked back on it all, knowing what he had learned in the last few minutes... How could he not have known? His laughing grew more hysterical and his back arched, vision blurring as tears filled his eyes and rolled down into his ears. He had been duped. So completely and utterly that he might have given his traitorous friend some well earned worship had the situation not been so horrifying.

He continued to laugh as he felt hands shaking him, a voice calling his name. They jostled him around but he was blind to the world as everything crashed down on him with perfect clarity. Peter had never really been much of a friend to the other Marauders; a stooge, a lackey, a hanger on, James' fan-boy. His use in the marauders had been as that of a thief and information broker, always overlooked by the rest of the school as useless and thus ignored, able to slip in and out of just about anywhere without being taken note of. There had been some skill with runes and charms, but never anything to write home about. He distinctly remembered McGonagall telling Peter he could do so much better on more than one occasion and it was always one of them who had ended up doing the little rat's homework for him. Then there was the part where his animagus form was that of a vamperic rodent. If that hadn't been a telling enough sign Sirius didn't know what was. Known to the Spanish as the goat sucker the magical rat which made Peter's animagus form had magical abilities for being undetected, escaping and leaching the life force of their victims by drinking their blood. Animagus transformations were supposed to be very telling about the person who became them with magical creatures denoting magical strength and mundane creatures weakness along with numerous personally traits and physical markers being shared betwixt the two.

Pettigrew had never been brave either, something that had always struck him as odd for a Gryffindor who while not always heroic, were almost universally brash and confident. He had only become a member of the group after Sirius, James and Remus had become fast friends and become known as preteen terrors. He'd come crawling in looking and acting like a puppy and just never left, becoming their friend by default his presence gained by osmosis more than anything else. After graduation it had nearly been the same, with Peter following the pair of them into the Ministry. Unfortunately for Peter, where James and Sirius had been immediately picked up by the Hit Wizard corp, the magical MI6 cum knights of Avalon, Peter had been offered a lowly position in magical maintenance and little else.

As the war picked up James and Sirius had gone one mission after mission becoming known as heroes while Peter had sunk further and further into obscurity. When the pair of them had been recruited into Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix Peter had joined them once again, along with Remus. But the rat had quickly begun to skip meetings, skive off assignments, and simply become unfindable whenever something important had just happened. When Gideon and Fabian Prewett had gone into hiding Peter had disappeared, the Prewett twins died soon after. Edgar bones had been killed in an ambush in which Peter had survived, he had been the one to inform the order that Dorcas Meadows had been killed by Voldemort personally and so many other small coincidences. How many had he betrayed by the end of it all? Had he been planning this all from the beginning? Did they hold something over him?

What?

Why?

Then there was a flash of red light and Sirius faded mercifully into unconsciousness.

~! #$%^&*()_+

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	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: Winnie the Poo was stuffed with fluff and a cheerful fellow. Since all the money for Harry Potter literature goes to Lady Rowling as her intellectual property and not me, I do not have such Luxuries.

Chapter 3

by Byakugan789

Lily and dippy arrived just in time to see Peter cut off his finger and transform. As her friend and sometimes confidant disappeared into the smoke and dust of the street he had blasted apart the redhead couldn't help but gape. She had known that it had been Peter who had given up their location to Tom, but that he had done it willingly... it wasn't that the idea hadn't occurred to her already, well before even Sirius, but it had been so repugnant that seeing it now... Lily forced her fragile emotional state behind an iron will, she could break down later, for now she had to avert Ivy's prophesy... or far-sight.. vision? What was it really? Prophesy was supposed to be immutable, but here she was, changing things.

Even as red robed Aurors began apparating onto the scene Lily grabbed the laughing heir or the Blacks and began shaking him forcefully. "Sirius. SIRIUS! Snap out of it!" When the handsome black haired man just laughed harder, the sound becoming hoarse and pained, tears flowing down the side of his face she slapped him, _hard._ "Sirius! I know this is hard for you to accept, Morgana's tits, I'm on the edge of breakdown myself, but you have to snap out of it! The aurors will be interviewing the muggles shortly. Peter set you up and set you up well, you _have____**to calm **__**down!**_"

She turned around to see the Aurors approaching and cursed. Stunning Sirius she conjured a hospital bed and lay him down before turning back to the approaching red-robes. It would do no good to take Sirius from here until the magical police had had their questions answered. For such a short amount of time to plan Peter had built this setup well and she had little doubt in Sirius' unbalanced state that the sequence of events Ivy had shown her was likely. Inevitable even, if she herself hadn't survived. Sirius notoriety as a war hero would probably help in securing his release or trial if it had to go that far, but with the number of imperious traitors and his current dementia... it didn't look good if left on his own.

"Potter! What the Hell happened here!?"

Shaking herself from her morbid contemplations Lily focused on the Auror in front of her and had to bite back a scowl. It was Crouch. What in the nine worlds was the head of the DMLE doing here? Moody she might have understood... wait, no, she could see the grizzled captain stumping around the blast site, still. Crouch had been the one to propose, push and authorize use of the unforgivables and other similarly dark arts in pursuit of the death-eaters. She had no compunctions against killing them despite all of Dumbledore's sermons, but use of the dark arts was frowned upon for a VERY good reason. The effect some of those spells had on the magic of the user, not to mention their mind and soul...

No, she had no time to think of how much she disliked this hardliner before her, she needed to clear Sirius and likely as not answer questions about last night. "Sirius and I came here to collect Peters body or find clues on where he might have been taken" she said firmly. "We'd set him up to be our ward master for some particularly powerful enchantments that required an individual outside their protection to use and spread the word that Sirius was the ward master instead. When Tom just waltzed straight through my and my husbands wards there were only three options. Peter was dead, being pumped for information under torture or a traitor." she wrapped her arms around her stomach, cradling her breasts and drew in a shuddering breath. "Peter was here calm as could be and unharmed. When he saw us he panicked and ran out into the street, shouted something at Sirius, blew up the pavement and disappeared down into the sewers."

Crouch frowned. "I've never known Pettigrew to be a man of action. Do you think he might have been under the imperious curse?"

Lily shook her head furiously, tears beginning to leak out as her resolve wore thin. "No. The imperious can do many things, but lowering wards or keying people in is an exception. The control interferes with the victims magical signature and they become temporarily unrecognizable to the warding magics. They could still be made to attack the schema from within or without, but not as their master."

Crouch grinned, obviously thinking about opportunities the information offered. Perhaps using a curse breaker as the caster on death-eaters allowed into various protected sites and then having them bring down wards from which they themselves have impunity. "Right. Alastor tells me he can't find anything of Peter but a lot of blood and a finger. You're sure Black had nothing to do with this?"

She glared at him. "Peter, Sirius, James and I are animagus along with half a dozen other students in our peer group." she snapped. "Tell your men to look for an unusually large gray rat with spurs on its feet and a toe on his right forepaws missing."

Crouch gave her a dirty look. "You know leaving an animagus form unregistered is illegal. I'll have to take the pair of you in for this."

Lily raised her eyes. "Half of the Wizzengamont is or has a close family member who's an unregistered animagus, they're hardly rare. Or did you think there wasn't a reason wards against them are still purchased regularly throughout Britain? If you're going to waste time taking me in for presenting evidence that could lead to the capture of a death eater you've got another thing coming. It wasn't you and your aurors who took down Voldemort last night."

Crouch's brow twitched and his face purpled as she uttered the taboo, but lit into her anyaways. "Your husband was the trained and qualified Hit Wizard, not you! And we have only hearsay to confirm he's gone at all, let-alone that you beat him" Crouch snapped.

"And hearsay is all most of the wizarding world has ever needed to believe anything!" Lily snapped back "Just look at the Prophet!" Closing her eyes she drew in a deep calming breath. "I'll testify under veritaserum to the lot of it, and so will Sirius if that's what it takes. Now, if you don't mind the both of us have been put through a lot in the last twelve hours, what with Voldemort's attack and James' death, so Sirius and I will be going home. If you need us send an owl. Dippy, take us home."

And with that they were gone, leaving a disgruntled Bartimius Crouch in their wake.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Severus Snape sat in the main room of Cobblepot and Umbridge, a popular high society pure-blood establishment in Diagon Ally, calmly sipping from a glass of fire whiskey as he observed the chaos taking place around him. The primary core of Voldemort's forces, those not held in place by money but rather ideals and a sense of ambition, were all shouting furiously at each other; trying vainly to make themselves heard over the din.

His efforts to spread the 'legend of Lily Evens' had offered quite an effect on the wizarding world. And he couldn't help but smirk every time he brought the brandy glass he was drinking from to his lips. Many were crying out in defiance of the story, believing instead that it was something to do with the death of James Potter, a pure-blood, and the wards placed over the house that had either killed or driven their lord into hiding until he could recuperate. Others still believed that Voldemort was merely abroad and the Light was using this as a play for power. Others still were calling for Lily's head or voicing their relief that Voldemort was gone so that they could go about business as usual without having their intended working class senselessly slaughtered left and right.

Of them all, only Severus knew the truth. He almost relished it really. Holding that sort of power over others, being able to direct their actions by releasing bits and pieces of information here and there and watching the rats scurry about. Was this what it felt like to be his current or former masters?

"He's not dead, you know..." Snape drawled, his quiet voice pitched to cut through the din, a trick he'd picked up during his days at Hogwarts.

Everyone fell silent. "And what would you know about it, Severus?" came Malfoy's snobbish voice from across the room. "After all, you've been spending more of your time cozying up to Dumbledore than actually paying attention to the goings on at base these past months."

Reaching into his robes the greasy pale man withdrew a vial filled with silver smoke. "Take a look for yourself." he replied as the blond caught the memory of Voldemorts corpse and the shadow being forced into Dumbledore's cabinet. There was a tussle and a good deal of screaming as Bellatrix Lestrange tackled the blond and wrestled him for the vial of memories. Snape smirked. Stupid bitch, didn't she understand that she'd have plenty of opportunity to look at the contents with everybody else when they were placed into a pensive? Still, it was quite amusing to watch Lucius face turn purple as the woman blasted him in the lower abdomen with an orange beam of light. Soon others joined in and it looked less like a high society of politicians and assassins than a schoolroom brawl.

Calmly pulling out another vial Snape scooped out another copy of the memory and proceeded through the chaos to the manager of the establishment, one Alfred Poole, and requested a pensive. When he turned around, everybody was staring at him.

"Yes?" he asked calmly, raising a brow.

"You knew that would happen..." accused one of the red faced death-eaters, as he started applying healing charms to a large gash on his arm.

"No" Snape said coolly, "but it was quite amusing. Makes me wonder how many of you gained your reputations. I'd also wonder how we ever got this far, but the sheer volume of deadly spell fire and the fact that none of you are particularly injured despite the back-casting, close quarters and sheer number of random opponents took care of that." He nodded a thanks to Poole as the man came back with a stone bowl, carved in runes. Pouring the contents of his memory vial into the bowl he tapped several runes along the edge and base of the artifact. He watched calmly as the action caused tendrils of liquid silver to rise from the murk and wave about like Cthuloid tentacles or the appendages of the Japanese' terrifying adventures in the magical animal husbandry.

As the crowd gathered around and took hold of the various tendrils Snape watched with amusement as their faces went blank, eyes dull and expressions flaccid. It would be so easy right now to just call the ministry and have them all arrested... but then how would he direct them away from his lady love, so recently freed to peruse him? Surely some of them would escape whether by money changing hands or threats to excise various political skeletons... no, better to send them against a target like Dumbledore who could take the heat and ensure their incarceration. This memory might confirm the rumors that Lily was responsible for the dark lords downfall, but it would also absolve her of responsibility painting her, in the minds of the true threats of the dark lords reign, as having gotten lucky while the old fool did all of the hard work.

Now, with any luck the problem cases would band together to attack Dumbledore at his school directly, be removed to Azkaban and the rest of them could take proper advantage of the wizarding worlds celebratory lethargy. The Knights of Walpurgis making key legislation and deals, and he himself ferreting out his lady love and becoming her pillar or strength in this oh so trying time. He smirked quietly to himself as he remembered James corpse lying there on the headmasters stone floor. If only he could have had the opportunity to desecrate it... Of course he'd have to seem properly recalcitrant, Lily, bless her, had a fondness for James and _such_ a temper. But he could handle himself so long as his rival wasn't often discussed or thought of and as for the brat... well, that's what accidents or blood adoption rituals were for.

Smirking he left the room to the sounds of Bellatrix shrieking out her hunting call.

~! #$%^&*()_+

When Sirius came too he found himself, somewhat surprisingly, sunk into the the warm feather bed of his apartment, something misshapen and hot against his back. Frowning, he twisted around to see Lily, her back to him, curled fetal style around Ivy. Pushing himself up slightly he inspected his best surviving friend and best friends wife. Her hair was a mess, her nose red and closed eyes dark and puffy. Ivy stirred in her mothers arms and looked up at him with that same strange intelligence she had shown as long as he had known the child. Ivy looked down at her mother and then up at him pointedly. Bringing her small arms up to her face she put fingers at the bottoms of her eyes and drew them down her cheeks then placed both hands to one side of her head miming sleep before continuing to stare at him pointedly.

Sirius returned the stare incredulous. That Lily had cried herself to sleep after apparently bringing him back from the madness that was Peter wasn't surprising, but an 16 month old being subtle and accusatory? Ivy had always been startlingly aware and intelligent, but this was beginning to get ridiculous. Concentrating, he wandlessly summoned his wand (always a useful talent to master even if everything else is too hard) and subtly cast a few spells to detect polyjuice, possession, various compulsion magics and shape-shifters. With all of the magical creatures out there who liked to steal babies or leave their own to be raised in human homes it was a reasonable possibility.

Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately depending on how you looked at it) none of the came up positive. This was distressing. Not because Ivy was the same scary smart kid he had been there to help deliver and been named godfather too, but because the brats apparent message was that Lily was crying herself to sleep because of him. He wondered if Lily had been like this when she was a child, only a little less magical. It wouldn't surprise him.

He paused and thought about that a minute. It sort of made sense in retrospect. James was dead, Peter had betrayed them, they had no idea if they could trust Remus and he had charged into a potentially disastrous setup by Peter and suffered a minor psychotic break. Lily had always been fiercely devoted to her friends, in fact it was one of the things the marauders had teased her about early on, telling her she should have been a puff. She had been absolutely devastated and whole magnitudes beyond furious when Snape had finally broken to peer pressure at the end of fifth year and called her a mud-blood on reflex. If he went down all she really had left was Andromeda and Ted Tonks and Frank and Alice Longbottom. Half of her friends and with the exception of Alice, all of her best friends.

Alice had been Lily's best friend since first year and was Ivy's godmother.

Speaking of which, he should probably key the couple into his wards. He'd been intending too, just as with most of the order, but not for several weeks from now. That would be what they would do today he decided. Waving a hand through the air Sirius brow furrowed briefly in concentration as he cast the time charm tempus, causing numbers to appear in the path his hand had followed. 10:20 AM November 2nd, 1981. Had it really been... what, not even two days? Sirius felt a deep aching sense of melancholy, but pushed it down. He had to be strong for Lily, by and large they were all each other really had left.

"Dippy!" he whispered, smiling as the little homunculus faded into view. A far better elf than Kreacher, little Dippy, always attentive, always watching. "Could you make breakfast? A full London fry up and tea." The elf nodded and faded away again.

That done Sirius lay back down and relaxed, slowly stroking Lily's hair and thinking about what to do. There would need to be a meeting with Dumbledore soon enough. He likely knew much, having been brought the bodies of James and Tom by Hagrid, but there would be other things he needed to know, things only Lily could tell them. Then there was the matter of arranging for James'... James' funeral... Sirius fought the urge to break down into sobbing himself, there was no time. The world was still in chaos and there were things that needed to be done. Like informing Albus to be on the lookout for Peter and his animagus form. Chupacabra were dark creatures after all and both they and rats could do with being forced out of the castle.

Sirius himself would also need to know what was going on. Now that Master Moldy Shorts had tossed it it was doubtless many of the Order's plans would change. Would the war get better? Even end perhaps? Or would things get worse with Tom no longer at the head to hold the reigns on his more zealous followers? Followers like his unfortunate cousin Bellatrix... Poor girl was never the most amiable of sorts, but she'd at least been fun to hang with before her marriage to the LeStrange family. Even now, having close personal experience with the utter sociopathic monster she'd become it was odd to think of her as such. What the death-eaters and Voldemort must have done to her he only shuddered to think.

Regardless, she was on the top of the list for those the Order would need to set up for Azkaban at the earliest possible convenience.

As the smells of food began to waft into the bedroom from the penthouse's kitchen Sirius felt Lily stir. Looking down he smiled sadly as it seemed the woman's first subconscious action was to tighten her grip around Ivy before opening her eyes to see the girl safe and sound. Stretching and moaning slightly Sirius heard several wet pops as bones realigned themselves from what might have been hours in an unfamiliar position. "Morning, Lily. Breakfast?"

The redhead grunted and, taking his goddaughter with her, left the bed, intent on coffee. Chuckling Sirius followed her. They had their brunch, for it was nearly 11 am , mostly in silence. Ivy had Dippy get her orange juice and eggs, but other than that the clinking of silverware and slurping of Lily's caffeine were the only sounds.

"You should have waited."

Sirius looked up. Lily's eyes had bags under them, her hair was a mess and she looked ready to start crying at any moment. "Hmm?"

"Peter." Lily whispered. "Ivy had a vision of what would have happened." Now Sirius gaze focused not on his plate, but on the pair of girls in his kitchen. "You should have waited. Peter got away. If I hadn't been there, if I had died two nights ago, or Ivy hadn't sent me last night you'd be snogging a dementor right about now." She snorted. "It was a close call as it was. Crouch showed up. You know how he's been."

Sirius nodded, staring holes in his goddaughter. Even as a captain in the Hit Wizard corps Sirius had known well what Crouch was like, the man was the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement after all. While Aurors were detectives who tracked down law breakers and dark wizards they weren't typically allowed to kill them except in self defense. That was what the Hit Wizards were for. If a creature or person proved themselves to dangerous to contain, cover up or rehabilitate, Hit Wizard squads were dispatched to take care of the problem. Permanently. That was after all why they were paid a hundred galleons a week and reserved their own dedicated bed at Saint Mungos, their job was to handle the situations and beings which others simply couldn't.

Fudge, however, had changed that. Under his reign the much more populous Auror office was not only given the go-ahead to kill confirmed targets on sight, but actively encouraged to do so.

Sirius personally found his bosses position absurd. It was akin to telling a bobby they were being drafted into the SAS. It wasn't that Sirius and his fellow adrenaline junkies didn't appreciate the help, it was just...weird. After-all, why would you bother having a magical armed forces at all when you were going to have the secret police now did their job for them? "I guess I'll have to add talking to my boss near the top of our list of things to do." The Grim animagus replied nodding. "Today though I think we should go get the little one her father back and make... make funeral arrangements."

Lily nodded. "He'll want to be buried in the Peverall graveyard, w-with the rest of the Potter line."

~! #$%^&*()_+

While the wizarding world celebrated the spreading news of Voldemort's demise at the hands of one Lily Potter, Arthur had other things on his mind. He had taken the day off to spend with his family. Young Septimus was already starting to show signs of magic. He wasn't even three months old.

This was going to be tricky. Bloody hell, his eldest wasn't even in Horwarts yet and now he had to deal with the seventh of the seventh... And after seven paternal generations of all boys too. The line of sevens didn't really care about male or female so long as it remained unbroken and of a single gender, but males were of the pattern were always easier to track. Seven generations of a single gender was usually the breaking of a families curse of some sort and always culminated in a generation of incredible talent. He knew he could expect a lot from his boys, he only felt sorry he'd have so little to offer them in return. His job wasn't exactly glamorous and that meant the pay was pitiful. Hell if he didn't love it though.

The second part of the line of seven was usually the one that happened most often, seven children of a single gender unbroken, the children of that seventh will have magic if from a muggle family or be powerful among their generation if from a magical one. Should that child have seven further of their same gender then the seventh would be the most powerful witch or wizard of their time with powers of prophesy, an incredible talent for healing, and depending on which story you read, power over either earth or plants and animals.

He's once read a muggle book about it too, saying something about Wicca, spawn of Satan and the seventh of the seventh being the anti-Christ, whatever that meant, but it was all a load of bollocks.

Regardless, the boy would have to be raised carefully. Power, after all, corrupts easily. Take it too easy on the boy and he'd become a brat and quite possibly a bully. Lavish him with gifts and attention he's become entitled and his brothers jealous. On the other side of the coin, holding him to a higher and harsher standard than his siblings and he's likely become rebellious and contrary. Give him too little and he would be covetous and jealous. Perhaps he could look into taking his hobby professional like? The ministry was making rumblings about enchanting muggle cars as a sort of VIP transit system and he was the authority on appropriation of muggle artifacts and punishing their misuse. He couldn't deny it would be fun. He's just have to include regulations about muggle aversion charms and other such being mandatory.

The world had just gotten done with one dark lord, and he without a prophesy. He wasn't sure they could handle another so close on the heels of the last. If he was going to do this right he would need the money... Besides, it could be fun!

~! #$%^&*()_+

Lily Potter fidgeted nervously under the weight of the stares and whispers. It only showed in her tight grip on the dozing Ivy in her arms, but she was still deeply uncomfortable. Was this what Professor Dumbledore felt like all of the time? Some of the stares were confused, plenty were angry, but most looked at her with a sense of awe and hero worship. They were trying to be discrete but she'd caught much of what they were saying anyways as she moved through the ministry beside Sirius. Holy Mother some called her, others wondered at her power, or cringed in fear and expectancy of her wrath. Apparently someone had spread the story that Tom had come into her Ivy's room and threatened them with her and in the ensuing battle James had died while she'd torn 'he who must not be named' limb from limb for the offense. The throng of clerks and functionaries seemed largely divided on whether she was the savior or simply the next dark lord but all agreed that she was powerful and that paired with her status as a muggleborn made them nervous.

As the three of them made their way into Barty Crouch's office the redhead desperately hoped this would all be over soon. As they reached the door there was a commotion behind them and the strongly built, if a little portly, head of the department of magical law enforcement appeared, shoving his way through the crowd, knocking people over right and left and positively snarling in his query as to why everybody wasn't busy themselves.

"You two!" he barked at a nearby pair of aurors as he reached Sirius and Lily. "Fetch me a vial of Veritaserum and a pensive" he ordered. "NOW!" The pair of men who'd still been gawking scurried off to follow their bosses orders and the stiff Englishman turned to the pair of them.

"Hit Wizard Black, Lady Potter, my office?" He said stiffly, leading them inside.

Once they were all seated he continued. "Now..." he said glaring at Lily "as we were interrupted in the middle of our investigations yesterday I'm going to make this quick. Eye witness testimony states that Hit Wizard Black chased ministry maintenance worker Petigrew from his house out into the street where he accused Black of having compromised the ward scheme defending the Potters summer cottage in Godrics Hollow, Whales." He turned to Lily. "Further eye witness testimony details Petigrew is not in fact dead, but an escape artist and animagus. You further stated, Lady Potter, that Petigrew was the one who compromised your wards, resulting in the death of Lord Potter." He put his notes down on his desk. "Do either of you have anything further to add before we begin the questioning?" Sirius looked to Lily and Lily shook her head. Fudge nodded and was about to speak further when the door burst open to reveal a red robed Auror bearing a pensive, a handful of glass vials and a tea set.

"Set them down there, Auror Bagins, and get out a quill. You're going to take notes." That said, the head of the DMLE poured the pair of them tea. "Auror Bagins, you've an affidavit this is indeed Veritaserum?" Crouch droned, waving his wand over the bottle to perform a diagnostic charm "We don't need our witnesses dropping dead in my office, especially if they're telling the truth about all of this business."

"I swear on my magic sir, I performed the identifying charm myself and the quartermaster swore as well when I picked it up. Three drops, sir, the Quartermaster demanded I remind you about the expense."

Crouch gave the man a withering look. "And you'll remind the quartermaster we're still in the middle of a war. Unhindered celebrations or not." He poured thee drops into each of the cups and handed them to the pair. "You should know the drill Hit Wizard, you've been through this enough with those reckless tactics your team employs."

Sirius grinned slightly in spite of himself and nodded. Putting his wand to his temple "**Mnemosyne"** he said, drawing the wand away from his head and concentrating on everything that had happened since he'd left at the Potters Samhain celebrations. Dropping the memories into the pot he drank the tea and grimaced.

"What is your name."

"Sirius Orion Black, still heir apparent to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black despite my mothers best efforts." The man answered with a smirk.

Crouch gave Sirius a withering look and Lily shook her head sadly. Even moping, devastated, betrayed, in shock and drugged, Black was still cracking smart remarks. Merlin's sweaty balls.

"What is your rank and who do you answer too?" Crouch continued with a glare.

"Team captain, MoM Hit Wizard corps, and you Batty Barty. Dumbledore thinks I answer to him as well, but since I bankroll his little club of watchdogs we'll agree to disagree on that." Lily winced and put her face in her hand.

"I already knew that, Black, stick to the question. Do you or have you ever served the recent dark lord, so called Lord Voldemort?"

"No."

"Did you murder Ministry Maintenance worker Peter Petigrew?"

"No."

"Were you trying to?" Crouch continued, raising a brow.

Sirius snarled. "I hadn't gotten around to that yet, no."

"Were you responsible for the deaths of the twelve muggles behind Mr Petigrew?"

"Partially."

"Explain."

"I chased Peter out into the street, thinking I'd cornered him. He blew up the sidewalk with a blasting curse to frame me and cover up his escape. Had I acted differently they might not have died."

Crouch nodded. Similar lines popped up in nearly every after action report, where there were casualties at least, he wasn't concerned by it. The worst he would get had he actually cast the curse was a month in Azkaban for muggle baiting. As was, he'd probably still receive a month or two unpaid suspension and hefty fine for an incident endangering the statute of secrecy. Again. "Explain the circumstances leading up to the confrontation. Be detailed." He finished, watching Black closely for signs he might be fighting the effects of the potion. So far there had been none, but you never knew.

"After securing Lily in my apartment I left to search for Peter. He had been the Potters secret keeper as part of my plan to keep them safe. I was the logical choice for the ward, people would target me while the secret remained safe with another in the event I was captured or killed in the line of duty. Since the secret had been revealed to the Dark Lord Voldemort it was obvious that Peter had told him. I intended to start my search at his home, believing he had been captured and the information tortured or coerced out of him. Instead I found Peter unharmed but melancholy, sitting in his dining room with breakfast. Unharmed and unafraid. At least until he saw me. Peter attacked me, something I'd never thought him capable of and while I was in shock and defending myself he ran out of the room. I chased him out into the street and the rest as they say is history."

Crouch frowned. There were no signs of a struggle in Blacks face or demeanor, nothing to indicate he was fighting the effects of the truth potion, but he was still somehow snarky. That was... odd to say the least. Sighing he went for one last line of questioning. "In the initial report Lady Potter indicated that both you, herself and Pettigrew were animagi, explain."

Black froze and opened his mouth emitting a squeak. His face contorted through several expressions before he began to bite out a reply. "In our fifth year James, Peter and I became animagi. James was a Forrest Lord, I was a Grim and Peter was a Chupacabra. James began teaching Lily earlier this year and I am unaware of her final transformation."

"An impressive feat." Crouch admitted grudgingly. "Many who attempt such magic become stuck mid transformation, part man, part beast, magical or mundane or die because a vital organ is partially transformed when they get stuck. Or so I believed until recently. Lady Potter, drink your tea, I'm sure you'd like to have this done with as much as I would." Crouch finished glaring at her. "And don't forget to leave your memories in evidence of your defense."

Lily pursed her lips. "The memories I can leave, but I'd much rather swear an oath on my magic that anything I reveal will be the truth."

Crouch offered a raised brow. "Something to hide Lady Potter?"

He received a glare in return. "More something I don't understand and don't want to be taken... the wrong way" she replied, thinking of Ivy. Her daughter being special was far from a bad thing, but the sort of attention she might receive from being named a seer... that could get bad, especially so soon after the downfall of Dark Lord Tom. Her not even being two years old would only make it worse, never mind Dumbledore's prophesy from Sybil.

"Alright..." the department head replied slowly "It's not as if this isn't against procedure, but know that anything you say under oath will hold less weight than a Veritaserum testimony. You may be called in to swear your words again. And the both of you will need to register your alternate forms before you leave."

The redhead nodded. "I Lilian Rose Potter Nee Evans Lady of the House of Potter do hereby swear upon my magic that my testimony shall be only truth, so mote it be."

Barimius and Auror Baggins looked at each other and shrugged. "State your name again, for the record."

The witch looked at him deadpan. "Really? Bloody politician bobby's. My name is Lilian Rose Potter. Generally and hereafter referred to as Lily or Lady Potter. ...For the record."

Crouch turned to Sirius. "Is she going to be as much trouble as you and your team, Black, or am I just lucky?"

Sirius grinned. "We've all got our coping methods, sir, we cant all do it by being a stick in the mud."

The officious man sighed and turned back to his current tormentor/victim. "How did you come to be at the incident in question?"

"I was warned that Sirius was going to be in trouble. I sought him out by way of his elf, Dippy."

"You were warned? By who? And of what?"

"That's the part I do not understand nor would prefer to comment on, officer." Lily replied. "As for of what the message detailed Peters betrayal, Sirius being framed and being taken to Azkaban where he would be kissed before trial."

Crouch spluttered. "Kissed before trial? Don't be ridiculous, dear. There would need to be a truly serious sudden lack of competency among the men I have stationed within and around the prison to prevent escapes or breakouts or a great deal of very expensive and easily traced skullduggery for anything like that to occur. Not to mention no one would dare. Estranged or not, if there is one thing Black family is known for it's vengeance and attacking one of their house would be the last thing anyone did, no matter how subtle."

Lily shrugged helplessly. "I have no reason to doubt the source. It very nearly happened just as I was shown. It's why I was so short with you yesterday. My husband had died only the night before, had been betrayed by someone I thought I could trust with my life and my families safety and I very nearly lost one of my closest friends as well."

"And you won't reveal your source because?"

The witch was silent for several minutes and Crouch was nearly ready to give up and try another angle when she looked up eyes hard. "Because I've seen how this society reacts to those who are different."

Crouch and Baggins looked at each other. "If you have no other questions?" Lady Potter asked, voice neutral.

"Leave your memories for evidence and you can go." The head of the DMLE stated stiffly. "With Blacks testimony we have nothing to charge you with aside from illegal practice of unregistered animagus transformation, and that's just a fine. Head upstairs, pay and register. Black, I don't want to be seeing you until the mater is settled in court. You're suspended without pay pending the capture or death of Pettigrew. If I catch you sniffing around this case I'll see you demoted and your team given to another captain as well."

~! #$%^&*()_+

Severus Snape watched silently as Lily Evans walked through the door to the Animagus tracking and registration office and swore.

Black was with her.

He should have expected that in all honestly, but he'd hoped that between the mess with Pettigrew and the death of that bastard Potter the other hellion would have buggered his way off to Azkaban by now. Or an early grave, either was convenient... If Dumbledore had dealt with his position as a spy properly then Black would not know he was on the 'light side' now and would likely be quite gleeful for the opportunity to try and kill him. Again. If the old fool hadn't been as circumspect as he really should have been, had been as foolish as the dark lord believed him to be, then both Lily and Black would know he'd been the one to turn over Voldemort's interest in the prophesy to the old man and quite possibly that he'd delivered it to his lord in the first place. If it was just Lily, he could possibly have talked his way not only out of it, but into being her support, but with Black there... Things would only go down hill. And quickly.

Regardless, his source had been right. Lily was here and that meant she most definitely was not at Hogwarts. With a flash of silver light he sent his patronus to Bellatrix telling her the ministry would be suitably distracted for her assault on the castle. That done, he made himself comfortable and waited. After about ten minutes Lily reappeared, a small girl with wild black hair in her arms and Black behind her. The child looked over at him and somehow, _somehow_, looked directly into his eyes. Even from here he could see those piercing green orbs, so like her mothers. He shivered. There was no Legillimancy, nothing against his shields, but he felt as if the little child were looking in on his very soul. And judging him. He turned away, and by the time he looked back the three of them were gone.

Making sure he wasn't being watched he quietly made his way into the registration office. Throwing up a couple of privacy charms he cast a silent Imperio on the clerk and took the complete, nearly filed forms from him. Black was a Bhargesht, a magical German variant dire wolf which had gained acclaim in ghost stories for consuming the dead and haunting churches just before and after deaths. They were as big as bears, just as hairy and a lot more intelligent. Known as loners they occasionally came together in packs and had become famous during the Grindelwald expansion for taking down entire squads of hunters with tactics that were almost human. These days having one as a familiar was considered a thing of prestige in magical Germany. He sneered, how appropriate. Black was a member of _that_ family after all. It was surprising to him that the mongrel had managed a magical transformation rather than a mundane one, but his cousin was hardly the dark lords most powerful psychotic and loyal follower for nothing.

Shuffling the papers he looked at Lily's file and froze. Incomplete transformation: Occamy. Occamy were Indian creatures, half serpent, half bird. Incredibly intelligent, highly energetic, beautiful and fiercely protective of their nest, silver plated eggs and mate. Occamy were generally pleasant creatures and had been kept as familiars by Indian wizards for centuries, but they were also known for killing even skilled wizards who violated the sanctity of their nest, eggs or chicks. It fit what he knew of Evans to a T.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Reviews are the coin of the realm, never forget to feed a starving author! ;-P

AN: Occamy can be found in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by JKRowling.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: If it seems different to you, it belongs to me. If you recognize it? It's very probably the intellectual and thus monetary property of JKRowling which means her bank account is expanding and mine is not.

Chapter 4

by Byakugan789

Snape! Snape! Severus Snape!

If Snape had known where the Potters were heading he wouldn't have wasted time snooping around. After reaching the atrium and pushing their way through the highly charged crowd of gawkers they flooed directly to the headmasters office.

Upon arrival the Headmaster turned to greet them, his hand still stroking Fawkes slowly. "Lily," the ancient wizard said, his voice heavy and croaking "I am... truly sorry for your loss. Love is by far the most powerful of forces and to have it taken from you... I can only imagine." He looked at Sirius, and his puffy red eyes narrowed. "I can assume, by Sirius presence, that he was not, in fact, your secret keeper?"

Lily nodded. "You'll find out soon enough." she said heavily. "It was Peter. You should... should be on the look out for rats. Peter's animagus form, he becomes one."

The 'leader of the light' nodded, subtly tucking his wand back into his robes. Moving from his familiar's perch to his desk he sat down heavily and conjured them a pair of squashy purple armchairs. "A rat you say, my dear? That's impressive. Not many people manage to gain animagus forms so soon after leaving school, particularly forms so small."

Sirius coughed loudly and Dumbledore turned to regard him. "Something to add, my boy?"

"Peter doesn't just become a rat, sir."

The old educators brows rose. "Two forms? That truly is rare! Such a pity that he could not have put forth such talent before leaving scho..." Sirius coughed again. "You weren't finished were you, my boy?"

Sirius shook his head. "James and I also had animagus forms. The three of us learnt them during our fifth year to comfort Remus whenever he became Mooney" the dark haired heir replied. Dumbledore nodded gravely. "Also, neither Peter, James, Lily or myself become more than one creature, it was just that Pettigrew becomes the magical rat Chupacabra, the South American vampire."

At this, Dumbledore leaned back in his chair, hands steepled in front of him. "Oh dear." He made a face. "I knew that Minerva became a Kneezel, but I was under the impression that was rare as well. If I may, what did you all become?"

This time Lily answered. "James became a Forest Lord," she snorted and wiped away a tear that moved down her cheek. "That over-antlered head fit his ego just perfectly. He took me to prank a number of druids in Scotland and Ireland on a few of our dates."

"And I become a Grim." Sirius added, smirking widely as the old man before him paled.

"And you, my dear? What do you become?"

Lily looked down. "I become an Occamy, but my form isn't complete yet. Would that it were, I could have saved James then. A Forest Lord's powers are only useful outside, but an Occamy..." With that she broke down into tears and a suddenly glum looking Black pulled the mother and daughter into his arms as Dumbledore watched in silence. Occamy were known wizard killers. What she could have done with a full transformation needed no explanation.

After several minutes she quieted and Dumbledore decided to continue. Reaching into his desk he pulled out what looked like an expensive cigar box and laid it on the table in front of them. "I've taken the liberty of preserving James body in here, Lily. It's ready for you whenever you're ready to see him buried. I wasn't sure whether you wanted to follow the Potter family traditions of the old Celtic pyre and burial of the ashes, the Black family traditions of his mother Doria and burial at sea with a pair of silver sickles or a more Christian fare as you're likely more familiar with."

The redhead took the box and stroked it, a lost look in her eyes, but before she could say anything the room lit up with a cacophony of light smoke and sound. The little silver instruments Dumbledore used to monitor the school wards and certain persons of interest were all crying out desperately for attention. On top of it all a large silver cat patronus suddenly burst into the room. "Albus!" Professor McGonagall's voice called out frantically "the school is under attack! There are dark creatures pouring out of the forest and cloaked figures beating on the wards! I'm going to activate the castles armors and other golems, but we need you here quickly! I've sent Fillus to put the wards on wartime footing! Hurry!"

The three adults and Ivy looked at each other eyes wide and mouths open. Even at the height of his power Voldemort had never dared attack the school directly! "What in Tartarus are they doing here?" Sirius asked as the three adults jumped to their feet.

"I know not," Dumbledore rumbled angerly, heading for Fawkes' perch "Tom was never this arrogant!"

"But he's dead," Lily cut in, placing Ivy on the desk and joining the pair of them by the Phoenix "that means he's no longer holding the reigns, professor! It may be scary to contemplate, but he may have protected us against the worst of his followers."

"Lily, you have your daughter to look after, you shouldn't come!" Sirius tried to argue and the Phoenix fidgeted at the hands on his feathers.

"Ivy is safe here in the headmasters office and the castle is full of house elves that would give their all to keep her and the students from harm," she protested "like the two of you I've faced everyone out there before in mortal combat more than once and lived to tell if it! I've survived Tom's own wrath four times, and last time I didn't even have my wand! It'll be fine! Fawkes, take us down!" The bird chirped, its magical voice approving before the three of the disappeared in a blazing inferno.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Harry sat there on the desk and shook his head in utter consternation. What in the _bleeding_ **hells** did those two think they were doing?! Was he destined to loose everyone no matter what he did? He'd changed _**time**_ for Merlin's sake! What did it take, simply to have a family of his own like everyone else!?

With a screeching wail of infantile fury Harry once more destroyed large numbers of Dumbledore's spindly silver trinkets and mecha-magical doodads. Fortunately for Dumbledore's office however, the not quite two year old body he was stuck in meant that Harry got tired of any one task both quickly and easily. _Ah the curse of a two year olds attention span_ he thought in irritation. With nothing else to do Harry began exploring the headmasters office, occasionally looking up to the window where bangs, screams animalistic howls and sizzling hissing sounds blared like competing instruments in an amateur orchestra.

Toddling around, and using his magic to keep his miniature female body steady 'Ivy', a name he had only just finally begun to really associate with himself, began rummaging through the old mans desk. He knew that in his old dimension Dumbles had been experimenting with the Peveral family cloak, the death shroud, at the time of his parents unfortunate demise. It had been one of the things Harry blamed him for, because with the shroud in his fathers hands Harry might not have needed to backtrack 18 years to save his parents. One, or even both of them, might have survived to get a wand and hold the bastard off like he'd done this time around. Aside from that, for all his faults, Harry wasn't convinced Albus deserved the chance to go back as he had. Things were already spiraling seriously out of control and the meddling old fool had done a bad enough job of it last time. He shuddered to think of the state the world might be in if the greatest of the Dumbledore's was allowed to go back a hundred and fifty years with all of the knowledge and power he had accumulated. Bad enough that he'd been stupid enough to do so himself.

He'd gotten through the unlocked drawers and found nothing of interest and was searching for hidden compartments or ways to overpower the locks without the old man noticing when the smell of smoke caught his nose. Dropping to his hands and knees, he lay his head against the cold flagstones and looked under the headmasters desk.

It was not good.

The door to the headmasters office was glowing brightly and trembling under some unknown and obviously powerful magic. Someone was trying to get in after Dumbledore had sealed the place, and by the looks of things, they weren't exactly the friendly type. After about a minute the door finally gave way, a black spot appearing in the center of the ancient oak paneling which gave way to violet and blue-green flames. After another couple of LONG seconds the hole enlarged enough that a person could step through it without undue difficulty and Harry saw who was on the other side.

Bellatrix Lestrange.

He had to admit, she looked good. Azkaban had done the woman no favors and having not yet been locked up there for fifteen years meant that she wasn't the wild, unhealthy, sallow animal Molly Weasley had beaten during the battle of Hogwarts. Mostly sane, controlled, healthy looking and at the height of her power, this was a woman no mere housewife was going to out-duel, motherly fury and Harry's own friend shielding sacrifice be damned.

Keeping as still as possible Harry watched as the sexy, full figured woman strode through the hole in the door and over to Bumble's cabinet. Carefully as possible Harry crawled over to the other edge of the desk and peeked around the corner. The woman was standing there in her closely cut and finely embroidered silk robes waving her wand in strange patterns over the wood and glass paneled doors, muttering to herself. Harry wasn't sure what the enchantments on the door had been or if they had even warned Dumbledore, but Bella was obviously worried about the wards on the armoire far more than she was about the ones on the door.

This would be the best time to strike.

Perhaps the only time.

Harry began to gather a small amount of red light between his tiny hands, but the moment he did so, Bella turned around. The witch looked from side to side sharply, her wand out and a curse on her lips, but saw nothing. Then she looked down. Harry eeped and pulled back behind the desk leg, but it was already too late, Bella was on her way over. He could perhaps take her out with a blast of raw magic, but it would be difficult if not impossible, the woman was known for her dueling prowess and savagery after all.

Dumbledore's wing backed chair flew out of the way as the Black cousin approached, a heeled, booted foot coming into view at the edge of the desk. Bellatrix Lestrange bent down and looked in at him. Or her as it were. "Well, now, what do we have here?" she asked, her voice soft and sweet. Harry froze. Wait, what? The woman who tortured the Longbottoms into insanity, acted like a raving lunatic and was in love with Voldemort of all things... was talking to him without mocking? Then again he was just a not quite two year old girl to her... "No need to be afraid, little one, aunty Bella won't hurt you." she continued in that same soft, kind voice.

Harry moved back against the knee board of the desk anyways. It would do no good, but there was really no reason to disabuse her of the idea that he was just your average two year old yet. Aces up the sleeve and all the muck.

"You're James little girl, aren't you?" Bella said, moving slowly and snatching him up from under the desk. Standing straight she cradled him and looked Harry in the eye. "What's your name, little one?"

"Ivy." Harry replied, trying to keep his voice as innocent as possible. Not much of a feat, being a two year old. "Daddy says I shouldn't talk to stran-strange-ers..." he bit out like a four year old still working on big words.

Bella smiled, her hips swaying as she took the pair of them back toward the cabinet. "Oh, is that why you were hiding?" she asked as she began to cast again. "Well, you don't have to worry about that, I'm Bella Black, your aunty. Your grandmother was my aunt. See? We're not strangers anymore!" Harry bit back his utter consternation as the bizarre circumstances and forced out a giggle. It didn't require a whole lot of effort really, the situation was just that strange.

"What that?" Harry asked turning his head slightly like any curious child would. "What doing?"

"Oh?" she asked, voice still kind and pleasant, "Well," she explained her voice becoming conspiratorial "the bad man who lives here took my dear friend Tom and stuffed him in this cabinet here! So I've come to rescue him! Would you like to help me? It could be fun!"

"Bad man?" Harry asked, playing along curious about the strange mirror of the Bella he knew thought of everything. It was just to ludicrous a situation to not want to see it through. "But mommy and unca paddy went with bad man!"

Bellatrix laughed. "Paddy! Oh, that's a good one, If he survives I'm definitely going to have to rub that one in his face! Hehe! Don't worry little one, Unca Paddy will protect your mommy from the bad men. _At least until I get out there_" she finished muttering.

Harry frowned as he took all of this in. In his old time-line he'd known that Bella had trained Draco Malfoy during the quiet parts of the second war and that around this time she would torture Nevilles' parents into insanity with the cruciatus curse. Aside from that he'd only know her as the raving lunatic who'd killed Sirius, presided over the war while Voldemort was abroad looking for the elder wand, and dueled half a dozen wizards at once before finally being taken down by Molly Weasely after he'd given his life to protect them all. He supposed it was foolish to think that that was all there was to the woman. She had supposedly been in love with Tom after all, why would it really be so unusual to believe that she'd be good with and possibly want children? Neville had been there when she'd tortured his parents after all, he remembered the boys' nightmares about it third year. Someone had to have kept the other three death eaters off of him, he'd just figured it had been Crouch Jr. rather than the three psycho stooges.

Regardless, it hardly mattered. She thought Voldemort was in Dumbledore's cabinet. He didn't remember anything like that happening, Dumbledore hadn't been aware of the Horcruxes until Harry's second year, or so the old man said. He supposed, perhaps if the creature hadn't actually died until Hagrid had delivered him? But then, how do you keep a soul from moving around without a Horcrux to put it in? Harry had no idea. "Perhaps after I get Tom back, we can take you to see my home? Would you like that? I'm sure Tom would love to have you over, your family's been such an interest to him of late after all, and I'd love to spoil my cute little niece! Wouldn't you like that?"

Harry's hand latched onto Bella's wand as it moved past him again and exploded. The force of the raw magic sent Bellatrix Lestrange hurtling back over the desk where she flipped over its edge and bashed her head against the artfully molded edge. The magic of the blast expended Harry molded a little more to allow himself to float down to land softly on the flagstones. At this point he was fairly tired. It wasn't nearly as much as he had done to Voldemort just a few nights ago, but it was pretty bad. A stream of raw magic was bad enough, but could be sustained for a couple of seconds. An omnidirectional blast was far worse.

Crouching down he picked up Bella's wand. Walnut, dragon heart string, 12.5 inches, unyielding. Hermione had used it after he'd taken it from the woman in the skirmish at Malfoy manor. He remembered this wand. It was a little surprising it had been her first wand, but then perhaps Malfoy had bribed one of the arresting Aurors and taken it as a trophy or for simple safe keeping last time around. It would make sense. Holding the wand in both hands he walked about the table. Bella lay there moaning, a red patch slowly, ever so slowly, spreading out behind the woman's head.

Well shit. He'd cracked the death-eaters head open... Normally he wouldn't have cared, might even have felt vindicated, to watch her die again after having had to watch her kill Sirius in the Department of Mysteries. ...but the woman he'd just seen... she had been nothing like the monster he had fought the last couple of years... Or maybe she had, but without him being a threat to her he'd been able to see the side of her one might if they were a friend? He cursed Dumbledore and the old mans sermons on forgiveness and second chances. THE BITCH DESERVED TO DIE, DAMNIT! He growled in frustration before something caught his attention.

"W-wh-hy..?" the woman lying on the floor below him croaked, her eyes already glazing over. He swore again.

"House elf!" he snapped, his voice high and childish instead of commanding as he would have preferred it. One of the little creatures, or not so little as it stood as tall as he did now, appeared before him.

"Yes, little miss? What can Pippy do for yous?"

He smiled at the creature. Hermione was right about one thing, house elves definitely deserved better treatment than most of them got. "I need you to go to the hospital wing and get me essence of dittany, a bottle of skelegrow, a blood replenishing potion and a powerful sleeping potion." He paused as the elf nodded but called out as it raised it's fingers to pop away. "Oh! And a funnel too if you can manage it!" he added.

"Right away little miss!" the elf squeaked. It returned only seconds later with the requested Items. Directing the elf to help him move Bella around he poured the dittany on the head wound and watched as skin quickly grew over the bleeding wound.

"Don't worry, aunty Bella," Harry said, as he forced open her mouth and jammed the funnel in it "Little Ivy will take care if you! I just can't let you release the bad man from his box." Harry chirped as he began pouring the potions into the woman's mouth. Bella's eyes widened and she nearly choked, but the magic of the hospitals potion feeding funnel kept everything going down smoothly and even as the light returned to Lestranges eyes with the wounds knitting themselves back together they almost immediately dulled again, but this time in a deep, dreamless sleep.

'Ivy' looked up at the silently watching portraits and put a finger to his lips. "Shh..." he told them, before climbing onto the woman's chest and laying down, her head between the death-eaters impressive bust. The pair of them stayed like that for more than an hour before Dumbledore, a heavily battered teaching staff and a much spell-burned Lily and Sirius made their way into the office. The lot of them gathered around the fallen form of Bellatrix Lestrange and looked down at him, shock clear on most of their faces.

"Well, Lily dear," blustered the unctuous tones of Horace Slughorn, "like mother like daughter, eh? I knew there was a reason you were one of my favorites! Not even two years old, and your daughter takes down Bellatrix Lestrange! She was another one of my special students, so much promise... It was a pity to see what happened to her after that arranged marriage!"

Harry nodded imperceptibly and looked up at his stunned mother. "Mommy! This is aunty Bella! Can I keep her?"

Sirius and Slughorn roared with laughter while the rest of them simply looked on in various states of shock.

"Ivy..." Lily choked out "why is... aunty Bella" she paused, as if having trouble with the words "on the floor?"

"She said the snakey man was in bumble's close-et!" Harry replied, mentally smirking as the old man paled dramatically and the teachers looked at him in horror. "Aunty Bella want-wanted to let the snakey man out of the bad man's close-et, but Ivy didn't want him to hurt mommy again, so Ivy make boom!"

Just to demonstrate and allay any questions Harry let off another weak pulse of magic. Everyone knew kids could do a lot under duress, especially wizarding kids. He just hoped Lily wouldn't try to bind his powers or anything. He'd done far more and far worse for quite some time, but that didn't mind the teachers, and most especially the headmaster, wouldn't want it done.

There was a click of wood on wood and Harry looked up and behind him to see Dumbledore laying out more cigar boxes on his desk. More than likely it was the prisoners and remains of whoever was attacking the castle. "We'll have to see about that when the Aurors get here." the wizened educator said kindly. "She is a bad girl after all, Ivy, dear."

"No!" Harry said, sounding for all the world like the petulant two year old he currently was. "Mommy, please! Want!" Honestly he wasn't sure why he was doing this, but the woman honestly wasn't that bad, yet at least. If there was ever a chance she could be brought around it wouldn't be in Azkaban, and it most certainly wouldn't be with the Lestranges. Slughorn's comment on Bella's husband had engender confidence in his recent chain of suspicion.

Harry watched as Sirius stepped forward and knelt down beside Lily, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Lily, do you trust me?" he asked quietly.

"Of course" she replied just as quietly, lifting her gaze from where her nose was pinched between her thumb and forefinger "but Sirius, what she wants..."

"Let me take point on this. I have an idea." Getting a hesitant nod from her the Black scion stood up. "Dumbledore, if I may, tresspassing is such a minor offense..." he looked at the door as all of the teachers stared at him incredulously. "Well... maybe closer to breaking and entering I guess. Point is it's nothing we didn't do while students here. Noting was taken, so surely you can find it in yourself to allow me to take her home to face Black Family justice?"

"...I know that look, my boy. What are you planning, Sirius?" He asked, his voice grave. "You know very well what she was after and the crimes she still has to pay for..."

"Planning? Me? Oh, don't worry sir, its nothing illegal per-say, but trust me on this." He said, his grin sinister. "When I get done with her, Bella will be the least of anyone's problems."

~! #$%^&*()_+

Unfortunately for the plans of Harry and Sirius the Ministry arrived before anyone could get away and began questioning the school in force about the event of the attack, Lily and Sirius in particular. Fortunately however, Sirius had had the foresight to have Dumbledore put Bella into another one of his Cigar box coffins like James and many of the other captured or dead death-eaters. Sirius had found it quietly amusing that Harry was holding onto it quite possessively, but made no note of it.

Crouch was furious however. Seventeen captured death-eaters, all high profile monsters and an 18th 'mysteriously missing'. It wasn't the caught or dead part that bothered the head of the DMLE, but more that Sirius, who he had just gotten done suspending not hours before, had been the one to do it along with a host of school teachers. Not trained Aurors or Hit Wizards, Professors. He was currently breathing down the neck of the embedded prophet journalist, ensuring that the article to be printed highlighted the fact that Hit Wizard Black had been at the forefront of the Battle. Suspended or not, one of his subordinates he could handle getting publicity for the captures, but letting the public think that the ministry couldn't protect them and that they should, or even _could,_ take matters into their own hands was unconscionable. The only reason he tolerated Dumbledore and his watch group, the Order of the Phoenix, was that half of the member were Arurors or Hit Wizards he could pin the credit on.

Harry shook his little head. He wasn't entirely sure whether to be horrified that the ministry was still this corrupt back when the war meant something or amused that they were at least competent in their corruption when they hadn't even had that two decades down the road.

As was, 'Ivy', he'd have to remember to keep calling himself that, was heading for a far more interesting conversation to eavesdrop on.

"So, Professor," his mother began.

"It's Horace dear, remember?" the rotund little man blustered jovially. "You've certainly earned that right after completing a mastery with me!"

"Horace then..." she replied with a smile. "It still feels weird though, after nine years as your student."

The head of Slytherin nodded. "I've received the same sentiment from other students as special as yourself before, dear." he replied smiling. "But you had something you wanted to ask me?"

"I heard the most horrible rumors the last couple of weeks." Lily explained. "You aren't really giving the job as potions teacher to Severus are you?"

Horace looked up at her, brows raised. "Why yes, I am actually. Dumbledore's put quite a bit of effort into convincing me to do it too!" He nodded. "Severus is quite a brilliant boy, I'd wager he's even better than you, my dear. When it comes to Potions at least... Way I hear it though you've several masteries over him yet and he has two! Still, I was dubious, quite dubious I say... Never been much of a people person, Severus. A terrible net-worker and not a particularly inspiring tutor either. I suppose Albus knows what he's doing though, given the sheer amount of effort he's gone to bribe me into early retirement."

Lily's worried frown turned to a scowl. "Dubious... is not the word I would have used. He's a hateful, spiteful little man and should never be allowed near children."

Slughorn looked at her eyes widening a little in surprise. "Dear Lily, I knew you'd had a falling out with him in your fifth year, but I never knew you to be vengeful..!"

The red head gave a short laugh. "I was the tiger-lily, remember?" she asked, shaking her head. "I've always been vengeful. The things I did to James and his marauders simply for their teasing my friends, Severus included, still cause people to flinch when they're mentioned." She shrugged "most people remember and remark on how I maintained and still hold friends from every house, but I wouldn't have thought even you'd forget why I earned my nickname."

The old wizard tilted his head to the side as the pair of them sat down in his office and pulled out a bag of candied pineapple. "Too true. And I suppose since what Severus did was so much more than mere sniping between him and Potter..."

Harry... Ivy, watched as his mother nodded her head. "Pureblood bigotry was why I had so much trouble with James and Sirius when I first met them in the train ride in. To have my best male friend throw it in my face like that when I was defending him... not even to keep some sort of cover, but on instinct? I could have forgiven him after some well deserved revenge and a year or two, but he just kept slipping further and deeper. The friends he kept, his habits, vocal opinions... he's the one who set Tom on my family and caused this weeks nightmare! You know what Tom requires for his servants initiations? Betrayal in preparation for, the masterminding of or committing cold-blooded murder under his supervision. No, even discounting his horrible attitude, utter lack of patience for the less skilled and utter failure as a tutor, the idea of letting that vile murdering biggot near children is one I find horrifying." Lily shuddered. "I might understand if Hogwarts or Dumbledore wanted to retain him as a potions researcher or even an assistant to help you with your NEWT level course load, but not this."

Horace nodded, thinking of another genius he'd helped only to be horrified at what he'd later discovered. "I'll certainly take that into consideration, Lily, but really, this is something you should be bringing up with Albus. While I can recommend my replacement it is the Headmaster's pen that dismisses, retires and hires professors at the school. Unless you wish to involve the governors that is?"

Lily nodded slowly before their conversation of the next several hours turned to far more pleasant topics. When Sirius came to collect them, having finally escaped an irate Crouch Ivy was fast asleep.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Diner at Sirius' place was a somber affair. Despite the excitement of the day both of the adults were still deeply irritable and melancholy. Having something to do, a way to push forward was a great way to deal with grief, but it was also and unfortunately temporary one. The moment you no longer had something to distract you the pain returned. Lily picked at her food, head bowed, Sirius jokes were halfhearted and darker than usual and Ivy sat there with his applesauce and milk questioning everything he had done since coming back, recriminating himself.

Should he have tried harder? How could he have done things differently. What were the consequences of his traveling back that the book had talked about. There was obviously the difference in his gender, but what else had he changed without deliberately acting to do so? Was he even in the same reality? Ivy wasn't sure. He had demanded of his reward to travel back within his own time-line, but you didn't become friends with Hermione Granger for 8 years without learning about odd muggle theories like multiple timelines, splittings, parallel and alternate dimensions. Had the creature really been powerful enough to send him back and the backlash from the spell performed beyond the restrictive rules of reality was changing things and enforcing others, or was what he wanted really impossible and he was now a spirit possessing his baby sister from another reality? Ivy shook his head... her head... Gah, that way lead to madness.

He was distracted from his, her, he had to get used to that eventually, thoughts by his mother picking him up and carrying the pair of them to bed. The three of them were still sleeping in Sirius' ENORMOUS bed by Lily's insistence. The genius redhead was incredibly tactile in her ideas of affection and comfort as he had learned over the last year and half and so Ivy didn't question it. They were still all clothed so it hardly mattered. He shook his head, opening the box that held Bellatrix Lestrange Black, and falling asleep thinking about why he had saved her and what in the world he had been thinking.

~! #$%^&*()_+

The next day was slow for everyone and a sense of gloom had settled over the world. Sirius had left early in the morning to sneak into Black Castle in Crete to access the library there and Lily was sifting though the Potter cottage, sorting through possessions and tears, gathering the work from her work room and working to repair what little damage Voldemorts attack had done to the building. Or perhaps more accurately, the damage Ivy had done to the door and wall outside his room. Ivy wasn't certain, but he suspected Lily was intending to abandon this place as the memories of James were strongest here and thus the most painful.

Ivy watched in confusion from his place in Lily's arms as the red haired witch packed away a pair of odd empty cabinets, heavily rune inscribed door frames and a blackboard absolutely covered with arithmatic calculations in one bag. The Cabinets looked eerily familiar, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out where from.

There were other things as well. A variety of odds and ends really. A shelf full of mirrors that didn't reflect back properly and accompanying stacks of notes. Glasses without lenses but an odd sheen to the air in their place. A small plant potter that seemed to glow with a misty light and a plant inside that was growing at a slow but clearly visible pace. A set of disks that spun counter to each other, sparking purple between light and pulses of power between them every time the runes on the opposing sides crossed paths. Running shoes that seemed to hover just off the table. Ivy felt a definite sense of awe as he looked around the room. Everyone had always told him in his last life that his mother had been brilliant, and his father near the top of the class, but for Lily to be an enchantress... the de-aged boy turned girl felt a pang of loss at the life he'd never gotten to know and an even sharper pang of hope at the thought of what he'd been able to save. Lily and Sirius were still here. With a proper parent and godfather at least he's have a proper understanding of who his father was even though he'd still failed to save him.

Harry sat there and watched as Lily continued to carefully shift book after artifact after manuscript of loose notes into a purse that just never became full and thought of Hermione. The bushy brunette had been so much like the woman he had come to know over the last year... Perhaps that was why he was always so comfortable around the girl? Why he'd only ever thought of her as a sister until it was too late to broach the subject of his feelings and she was firmly with Ron? It seemed like such a missed opportunity in hindsight, but nothing ever seemed to go right for them to become any closer. By the time that Ron and Hermione had broken up he'd already become strangely obsessed with Ginny. He couldn't quite understand that relationship even now, but it had been quite enjoyable at the time. Then, by the time he'd dumped Ginny to go on the Horcrux hunt Hermione and Ron had gotten back together and were in deep. Until that blowup over the locket and the dementors after which his best friend was in morning for what she thought she'd lost and he couldn't bring himself to move past merely comforting her. Then Ron had come back, the locket had spilled the goods, Ron and Hermione had gotten back together to spite it, at least from his perspective, and everything had just moved along to quickly to hold onto...

Ivy's musings and recriminations over her past life's actions staid him till his mother had finished cleaning out her workroom, gathered some cloths from the master bedroom, had a minor breakdown, cleared out the library and moved the pair of them back to Sirius' suite. Sirius appeared halfway through a trashy chickflick movie and tub of rocky road with a grim smile on his face and a bag full of supplies. Ivy felt a shiver go down his spine. The world was about to change again and he could only guess what was about to happen.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Severus Snape stared at Dumbledore in shock. Admittedly he wasn't particularly keen on teaching a pack of idiot brats about basic education level potions, but that Lily had come to the headmaster personally and argued against his being allowed anywhere near the school made his stomach sink. Had things really fallen that badly between the two of them?

Alright, perhaps she had a point about him being somewhat responsible for the dark lord killing Potter, but the man had it coming! He was no good for her! She also had it right that he had no interest in teaching bratts the basics of potions making, but it had been the assignment the dark lord had set him up on and since his defection Dumbledore seemed quite happy to have a quality double agent within easy reach.

The two biggest bonuses was that it meant the old fool would be keen to protect him now that Voldemort's empire seemed set to collapse and the school itself boasted an entire slew of rare, high quality nontradable potions ingredients within free and easy pickings. Mandrakes for instance were highly controlled by the ministry for the unenchanted roots use in the dark arts and the dragon dung enhanced living mandragora's lethal cry. The school however grew over a thousand of the plants yearly. Kelpie hearts, manticore stings, mermaid blood, poltergeist ectoplasm, phoenix ashes... there was even talk of a basalisk that hunted the acromantula every decade! Not to mention the cerberus Hagrid kept as a pet and the entire herds of Unicorns and flocks of Stygian crows...

"DO you have nothing to say Severus?"

The sallow man looked up. "What of splitting the class between OWL and NEWT classes?" the jewish wizard asked with a smirk. At the headmaster's curious gaze he explained. "Both Lily and myself are potions masters of good repute and she's right, I haven't the slightest patience for children nor do I suffer fools lightly. I might be capable of lowering myself to take on NEWT capable students without wearing down my patience and again, Evans is right, I would do much better for the school as a researcher."

Dumbledore looked at him, momentarily astonished. Severus had to admit, it was out of character for him to admit his own failings, but getting close to his Tiger-lily was more important, and what easier way than to have her forced to be close by nine months out of the year?

"That... could be possible..." the wizened man muttered, those blue eyes narrowing slightly in suspicion. "I'll need to clear it with the board of governors first, unusual staff appointments you understand."

Snape nodded and left for his assistant professor/guest. He has a series of subtle love potions to mix up and it would be best to get started early while he was relatively free of distractions.

~! #$%^&*()_+

AN: No, I don't particularly like Severus Snape, but I don't particularly believe I'm bashing him either. I'm sure plenty of you will be more than happy to correct me on that, but bear with me for a moment. This is a guy who has held a grudge for over twenty years and at the end, when he dies he still hasn't given it up. He hates, bullies and mistreats the son of the woman he claims to love for seven years going so far as to arrange the death of her husband, not once, but twice! The first by accident in the routine of aiding an international terrorist who wants to kill the pair of them, and the second by making a personal deal with said terrorist specifically to kill the loving husband of the woman hes infatuated with.

If Molly Weasley can happily admit to getting her husband in book 3 by use of a rape potion I see no reason why Snape wouldn't consider the same as a simply matter of course.

And yes, rape potion, not love potion. Drugged consent is still rape.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: You know the drill, I only own enough of this to post it freely on a fanfiction website. Lady Rowling owns the rest.

Chapter 5

by Byakugan789

Sirius returned from his investigation of the black ancestral libraries after three days, a grim smile on his face. Lily and Ivy were in a recently expanded closet cum laboratory, nose red and hard at work, a distracted air about her. Sirius stood in the doorway and watched her for several minutes before turning to Ivy who's so far been a fairly reliable barometer for her mother's moods. The tiny girl cocked her head to the side and he felt a slight prickling along his scalp indicating Legillimency. A second later the russet haired child mimed crying and then hammering motions. If he understood right Lily was still crying regularly over James and working to distract herself.

Reasonable... he himself had broken down more than once after coming across subjects in the black archives that he'd have loved to show James for their work or usual tom-foolery, only to feel the pain anew when he remembered the man was dead. He could only imagine how much worse it would be for Lily given the advanced connection she shared with Potter over his own relationship as best mates.

Sirius cleared his throat, still marveling over the strange intelligence of a not quite two year old.

Lily started. "How long have you been there, Padfoot?" the redhead asked, wiping her cheeks.

"Only a few minutes" the gothic hit wizard replied quietly. "I was actually admiring how you're handling this. It's not too uncommon for purebloods to charm-lock their memories of people whose deaths or betrayals caused them traumatic distress. Rather unhealthy if you ask me, but anything for them to not have to deal with pain."

Lily stared at him, dumbfounded for several moments before breaking out in laughter. When coming up for air nearly a minute later she gave an incredulous "Really?"

Sirius nodded. "Oh god!" Lily laughed again. "I don't know whether to feel vindicated or depressed hearing that! You're not just pulling my leg?"

Sirius smiled enigmatically. "Perhaps it's not as common as I implied, but it's true and more importantly it got you to smile again."

As Lily's expression fell to something resembling fond melancholy Sirius pushed off the door frame and swung a large book out from under his armpit. "So, I've brought with me here, a ritual" he explained. "As you may remember from your historical research binge of third year my family is responsible for the common muggle misnomer of 'black magic'. Most of the stories of evil marauding wizards that terrorized Europe throughout the millenia, excluding many of the dark lords and ladies, were from my family line. We regularly trafficked with just about every creature you've ever read about in your advanced defense books and a few you haven't and because of that we gained a rather breathtaking library of arcane knowledge. This, along with our history and reputation for producing dueling powerhouses even in this dying age is the primary reason Lord Moldyshorts took such special care to court my entire family, myself included. He didn't succeed with me or grandfather obviously, but that was the source of each of our duels."

"This particular book" he continued, moving past Lily to the center of the room and transfiguring a chair into a book stand large enough to hold the massive tome "was acquired in the seventh century BC when the fourth son of the main house was trying to expand our influence into the Scandinavian peninsula. While there we encountered a race of cave dwelling near humans calling themselves the Svartjalfar." He smiled, turning to a ink drawing of a group of wizards and elves facing off against each other. "You might know them better as the dark elves from Tolkien, or the Drow from that muggle forgotten realms game you showed me."

He poked the picture as Lily gasped, looking for all the world like a fangirl. She had after all been the one who introduced them to the lord of the rings series in their sixth year. It was one of Evans' first overtures towards the four of them in friendship. "Hey you, stop fighting for a bit! The lady here wants a look at you lot!" The ink drawings broke off from their duel and moved closer to the frame, making rude gestures the whole way.

"Drow suffer from an interesting form of immortality. They are a fiercely individualistic, independent and hard headed race and on their own can live up to three hundred year before dying of old age, similar to the more powerful wizards of our world like Dumbledore and Armondo Dippet. However, when living in large closely knit communities their individual power supports those near them and with high enough populations they can live for thousands of years, barring suicide or murder. He smirked. "Imagine. A race as afraid of dying as humans who regularly clash over their own individualistic antisocial natures, but can achieve immortality only by living in densely populated cities."

"It would be chaos!" Lily breathed, fingering the book reverently.

"This book contains everything my family ever learned about the Drow, including a lot of personal memoirs from Arulius' wife who was herself a Drow. The reason this is important is that within this book is the Drow ritual of Twinning. Within Drow culture space is at a premium and over population is a very real problem along with starvation, assassination and clan wars. Because of this slavery was so common place as to not even be questioned. Among slaves there were several casts. Laborers, who were usually recruited from orphans living on the streets, paid in food and shelter for work. The lucky ones attracted the attention of an artistan and could gain their freedom as valuable members of the clan. The unlucky ones simply worked in the fungal fields or mines and were kept in line with the threat of being tossed back into the gutter where they were found."

"The next cast up was servants. They were often selected personally by valued members of the various clans and families and served the same function as house elves. They held better cloths, finer meals and much better protection than most slaves because they often kept their master secrets which made them valuable to enemy clans if released or escape because of undue mistreatment. After that were the warriors. Trained in mass unit tactics and conditioned for loyalty they could advance into clan membership by showing skills beyond the ability to parrot formations and serve as a meat-shield for the useful fighters."

"Finally there were the Twins" he explained carefully, remembering and taking in Lily's disapproval of the entire concept of slavery. "Twins were special even among slaves. They were bound to their owners by a ritual and often selected and purchased from their parents shortly after birth. Despite what most would assume, the twinning ritual is a light magic spell. In Drow culture where cruelty and overpopulation cause such an enormous mortality rate the act of twinning a child is considered a high honor. It raises the chosen child's status and chance of survival dramatically giving them access to the same level of resources and treatment as the important clan member's own child. In exchange for this the twin is magically bound to their master, leaving the supplicants mind and magic in tact, often even strengthening them, but also focusing their entire worldview on the protection and promotion of their benefactor. Anyone subjected to this ritual would be literally incapable of betraying their master and would do literally anything for them, up to and including sacrificing their lives or performing acts that they normally wouldn't even consider otherwise. It doesn't include an obedience clause to the magic because it doesn't need to. The effect is similar to a person acting on love or other similar classes of utter devotion."

Lily nodded slowly. "And you want to use this on your cousin and my daughter." the redhead concluded quietly. "Why?"

Sirius sighed heavily, flipping the book closed.

"Belatrix wasn't always an evil murdering psychotic bitch" he said simply. "I'm not sure if you really remember her, but Bella was a few years ahead of us in school. She was smart, had a great, if acerbic, sense of humor and was quite popular. She told me once that the Hat had argued with her about being placed in Slytherin. It had her pegged as a Hufflepuff apparently." he smirked at his audiences disbelieving expressions. "I know, right? Go figure. Regardless, one thing you should have or will learn about Blacks is we have an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. We're incredibly loyal to those we consider to be family and are liable to lash out most viciously against those who would harm the people close to us. For me and James it was our pranks, for Narcissa it was the school rumor mill, even sweet Andromida would openly challenge people to duels whenever someone she cared about was threatened."

"And Bella was the quintessential Black," Lily finished. "I remember you complaining about her often during our fourth and fifth years."

Sirius nodded. "Quite. Where James, Narcissa and I could get pretty vindictive in our payback against 'outsiders', Bella was absolutely vicious. Top of her year with time to spare sort of genius student, she coupled it with the hard working attitude favored by puffs along with their deep and abiding loyalty. Those who hurt her friends often ended up having brutal accidents that landed them in the hospital wing for months at a time even under Madam Pomphrey's expert care. Somehow though she was never cruel to anyone who didn't deserve it and maintained almost as many friends in the other houses as you did. Put together study groups, tutored kids with the claws, ran a couple of clubs."

He shrugged. "She should have been a great person. Likable, dependable, got a dozen outstanding NEWTS and even two masteries before leaving school. Kinda like you."

"And considering what a vile murdering bitch she is now, I assume something happened."

Sirius nodded. "Her arranged marriage to Rudolphus Lestrange." He sighed and crossed his arms, pacing now behind the lectern, giving off the vibe of a caged wolf. "Neither of them were particularly bright, but they were amazing duelists and well known for their cruelty and their teamwork. They were almost expelled from Hogwarts over evidence that they'd raped and killed several muggle born students over the years, but the evidence tended to mysteriously disappear and witnesses would recant their statements even under oath. Rumors Narcissa relayed to me was that after being almost caught the second time the pair of them because quite impressive with the use of healing and memory charms. Doubtless the rapes continued, simply with fewer deaths and more confusion among the victims."

He shook his head. "Rebastian was even quoted to have said once in the common room that he couldn't get it off unless he saw blood on his prick. I don't imagine I have to tell you where this is going."

"No," the red haired witch replied quietly "you don't. Though I am curious how this lead to her being Tom's lead sadist and assassin."

Sirius smirked. "That part's actually easy to figure out. The Lestrange's family motto is 'monsters are not born, they are made' and such was true with Bella as well. She was a fighter in the first degree and even though it's pretty clear the pair of them succeeded, she wouldn't have taken that sort of treatment lying down. She started fighting back. I know this because my wonderful parents talked about it, loudly, often and with great disapproval."

Lily snorted, "I should hope she fought back! Rape, even marital, isn't something that should be condoned!"

Sirius laughed grimly. "That's it though. They weren't disapproving because she was being raped, they were disapproving because she was fighting back!" He shook his head. "When his stupendous snakishness made his way into the scene in a big way the entire Lestrange family joined him. For the most part they were thugs and monsters, good for minions and inspiring terror, but not a whole lot else. But in Bella he found a Pearl amongst swine. He was kind to her, encouraged savagery against those who messed with her and personally taught her the dark arts. She quickly became loyal to him in earnest and began winning against her husband and his brother regularly. She became the head of the Lestrange family through sheer force of will and magic her loyalty to snake-dick became slavish devotion. Her former vengeful streak supporting her friends became targeted against any who threatened her master and it was often rumored that they were intimate with each other."

Lily was silent for a long time but finally spoke up. "Even after knowing all of this and feeling somewhat sorry for her, I still can't fathom why you want to use this 'twinning' thing on her and my daughter. Given what you've explained she's broken well past the point of return and frankly I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with the old stable Bella being around my daughter either. What exactly do you think Ivy would do with her 'Aunty Bella' hanging around? I hardly need a nurse maid and doubt she'd be any sort of good influence on my daughter..."

Sirius rubbed the back of his head and grinned apologetically. "Yeah... well... I may have forgotten to mention that among other useful functions like acting as a runoff valve to protect the master from magical overload while performing rituals the Twinning also adjusts the age of the bonded twin to that of the master. I'd been going with the thought that Bella could use a second chance, one including a proper childhood, free of memories of her various trauma's and indoctrinations. Felt I owed it too her for not helping her escape the Lestranges like I did with Andy and the Notts."

Lily pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off a headache. Finally she looked up. "So she'll remember nothing? No trained or inherant personality disorders?"

Sirius shook his head. "Not if we do it right. Besides, how many children are as frighteningly self aware as Ivy? Most of them under the age of six have shorter attention spans than cats and are about as intelligent. Besides, I think you'd make a pretty good role model!"

~! #$%^&*()_+

Bellatrix woke up slowly. Her head was pounding and her everything was stiff. She moaned softly a tried to reach for her wand. She'd woken up like this several times before, typically after one of her husbands more successful assaults or more recently a particularly nasty cruciatus curse from the master on the rare occasion her... enthusiasm had ended up destroying the item or person he had been trying to collect. She wasn't particularly worried about finding her wand though, both parties liked to show how they felt no reason to fear her by leaving the weapon within easy reach and unbroken.

The problem was, she couldn't move.

Opening her eyes she instantly became aware of glowing lines crisscrossing the floor all across her vision. She was sitting in the middle of a ritual of unknown design, and what was worse, it was already active!

Closing her eyes again Bellatrix forced herself to calm down. Rituals were, in effect, permanent spells. Persistent effects that, outside of transfiguration, could not be maintained for more than a few hours at best. As such, ritual magic encompassed nearly as wide a variety of spells and functions as regular wanded magic, the effects were simply... bigger. For all she knew her efforts in the headmasters office had freed her lord but caused damage to her that was significant enough to need a ritual to repair it. Another possibility was this was her reward for freeing him and she was now taking part in one of the many spells he had used to empower himself above that of normal wizards. While she hoped it was one of the ones that didn't require the supplicant to sacrifice their beauty for power she could handle it to be closer to the man who had saved her from her husband and taken her under his wing.

The other side of that coin was the fear that perhaps she had failed. Who was it that had her? Why was she here? What did they intend to do to her? Even excluding the spells that called for specific components like virgins, babies, children, enemies, close family or friends there were a rather frightening number of spells that required a live sacrifice and over sixty percent of those specifically called for women. Add to that she vaguely recognized some of the patterns of symbols she could see in the ritual as something taken from the Black Library and that was seldom a good thing.

Realizing that she was only adding to her own panic Bella opened her eyes again to look around her limited field of view.

And directly in front of her she found Ivy. Bellatrix stared. The little girl her master had gone off to his defeat intending to kill. The same child who had somehow defeated her. She was sitting not four feet from her, illuminated strangely by the dark blue shafts of light that rose and spiked up from the lines and figures of the ritual on the floor.

"Hello, Aunty Bella." the child said, her voice soft an innocent.

"Hello, child." Lestrange replied haltingly. "Could you, perhaps, tell me... why are we here?" She didn't quite expect the child to understand all of the words, but the young girl had been able to hold a fairly simple conversation with her when she had invaded the headmaster's office. The words, 'tell me why we are here' would certainly be simple enough.

As she was watching, asking the question of her companion in the circle she became aware of a shape moving along the outer edge of the circle, the hem of it's robe illuminated by the light, though it did not extend far or bright enough to show who it might be. Straining her ears she also heard the murmuring of two voices, chanting. The one moving in front of her was slightly deeper than the one that she now heard behind her, along with the rustling of robes. So intent was she in these, possibly life saving, observations that she almost missed the reply.

"Unca Paddy dinna want you ta die" the little girl, Ivy she remembered, said with a smile. "He talkid about some funny magic and cut his hand. I asked unca paddy why he was hurting himself an he said somethin funny."

Bellatrix froze. Unca paddy. Padfoot was the name Potter had used for her cousin Sirius whilst they were on missions together. Honestly she wasn't sure why they referred to each other as padfoot and prongs in their reports, but as each member of their Hit wizard team had a similar name she assumed it had something to do with their office. Those reports had not only saved her life over several duels with her cousin but, much like listening to rumors of his actions at school, had also provided many wonderful ideas. More importantly to the moment though this would explain why she recognized parts of the lettering scrawled across the floor. Because the ritual HAD come from the Black Library. Urgently she asked "what did he say that was funny, Ivy? You can tell Aunty Bella, can't you?"

The girls answering smile was not one that warmed her heart or eased her quickly fraying nerves.

"He said," replied the all too familiar voice of her cousin "welcome to the family."

And with that, the lines on the floor lit up with a blaze of crimson light and the world disappeared.

~! #$%^&*()_+

Lily Potter walked slowly around the edge of the circle quietly chanting the phrases and precise pronunciations she had learned from Sirius and the ritual books. On the other side of the ritual was her friend, James best man and long term professional pain in the neck, instigator of this spell, one Sirius Orion Black. In this particular setting Sirius was using the invocations of the sacrificing priest, and head of family for the 'twin' being offered. She was reciting much the same words, in sync with him and taking place of the priestess to whom the sacrifice was being offered. The focus of the ritual was sitting in the center of the entire mess of sticky blood drawn lines with her daughter, the binding agent, positioned exactly forty inches to the south.

While she did not precisely understand why this measurement and direction were important, they were also performing the ritual to complete at 10:31 PM underground on the night of a new moon as it reached its highest point in the sky. Numerous specific lines of the ritual had been drawn of blood from her, from Ivy, from Sirius and that... that woman... whole others, more often the words, had needed to be drawn with specific mixes of two or more of their blood types. She wasn't particularly comfortable using an unfamiliar ritual on her daughter, but she had convinced Sirius to allow her to study the material and do some research before hand.

Convincing him had been the easy part, understanding the contents of the book had been harder.

The elves were apparently the origin of blood magic and, as far as the author was concerned, the masters of the art. What the ritual did, in essence, was to enslave a child to the protection but not the will of another child. If they weren't related by blood then afterwords they would become so. There were even reservations in the spellwork for if there was a significant difference in age between the protector and their 'twin' to ensure that they would grow up together. This in particular was a large part of why Lily was even willing to consider allowing the ritual to begin with. She could allow another child into her home, especially the one Sirius had described when he'd talked about young Bella. Ivy, after all, had been a delight save for the problems with Tom. It was Bellatrix Lestrange she could not stand for. Damaged true, perhaps even a victim, but still a violent, cruel sociopathic killer with a record to shame her own dark lords reputation.

As the pair of them, Lily and Sirius, chanted the silken words of the elves Lily kept a close eye on what exactly was happening. She watched quietly as lights began to spread across the lines and words of blood on the floor and felt the magic as it began pouring into the area, slowly bleeding across the pattern . As the words and lines of the ritual began to light up with their unearthly glow she noticed the _woman_ was beginning to awaken. Lily frowned, but continued the chant undeterred. The books she had taken from Sirius had been quite explicit that once a ritual had started any sort of interruption was bad, and the further along it was, the worse the reaction could become.

They were near the end of the ritual at this point.

Thankfully the actions of those within the circle were often written specifically to be irrelevant and often part of the magic was even directed to bind the victim specifically so that they could not interfere. Never the less, she listened closely to what the woman was saying to her daughter even as she continued the chant.

Then, abruptly, it was over. All of the words had been spoken, the ritual itself turned a brilliant crimson color and the pair of them stopped. "He said" Sirius spoke, a hint of apology in his voice "Welcome to the family."

The entire circle collapsed and Lily felt a thrill of panic run through her. As the lines and words of magic seared themselves into her retina and became as a net, or perhaps tattoos on the two supplicants of the spell she lurched, trying to run towards the pair of them. Towards her daughter. Except that she couldn't move! Looking around wildly she saw Sirius hand upraised, a faint ripple of light extending from it and a look on intense concentration on his face. "No!" he hissed. "Don't touch them, this is the end of the ritual, anything that disturbs it could kill them both!"

Lily nodded numbly, her panic subsiding slightly, but her nerves fraying even further. She'd almost broken the ritual, the books said that was bad. Very bad. Far safer to break things **afterwords** if it came to that. As the magic halting her advance dissipated the red-haired witch watched fretfully as the crimson streamers binding her daughter and the woman pulsed like the beat of a heart. Slowly, with each pulse, the larger of the two seemed to shrink in upon themselves. Her breasts shrank, hair receded, and her bones cracked and rearranged themselves audibly. As the woman that had been Bellatrix Lestrange ne Black regressed in age steam seemed to waft off her form in a riot of colors. These too shifted and changed with each pulse of the crimson threads, becoming purer and more uniform. Their size may not have shrunk, but the aurora was nothing compared to the one coming off of her daughter.

"Sirius?" she asked, plaintively.

"Umm..." was his initial, completely unencouraging reply. She was about to run around the other side of the circle and strangle the man when he continued to speak, his words acting for her like a lifeline to a drowning sailor. "From what I can remember reading about binding rituals of the fae the aura's appear when there is any sort of binding being placed on a persons magic. In this case Bella's power is being bound to the protection and support of little Ivy, that's why you see the flows of power moving from in and out of her through your daughters aura. As for the color shift... I really don't know. A baby's aura is supposed to be almost pure, maybe four colors at best. More colors and patterns appear as you use magic as well as a larger aura that develops as you age. Bright or dark colors indicate emotions most often used while casting. As to why Ivy has such a riot of colors or such a large aura... I'm lost. I really am."

Lily felt a shiver of fear go down her spine. "The prophesy..."

"What?" Sirius asked.

Lily was silent for several seconds as she stared at the dying lights of the ritual and the now 19 month old Bellatrix Black. "You remember. Dumbledore's prophesy. It said that the child who would vanquish the dark lord drew near, that they would have a power he couldn't understand. But it said the child would be a boy, so I'd dared to hope."

Sirius bit his lip and hummed. "That... could explain it, but then what was the power that Tom didn't understand? I'm no slouch in terms of wandless magic and neither was he when it came up in our duels, but while Ivy totally outclassed us he was hardly unfamiliar with it. James mentioned a prophesy too, but never told me what it said. You know it?"

Lily nodded. "Dumbledore told me and Alice after our children were born" she said before reciting. "The one with the power to vanquish the dark lord approaches, born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. The dark lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have a power the dark lord knows not. Either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the dark lord approaches, born as the seventh month dies."

The pair of them stood there for several moments in silence. "Well that explains why Frank and Alice took Longbottom Manor under the Fidelous charm as soon as Neville was born." He said heavily. "And take out the word him it could explain why he would be after Ivy and you and James had the idea to do the same a month ago. I guess Peter told him?"

Lily shook her head. "Severus did" she spat. "He was there, listening at the door when Trelawney gave Dumbledore the Prophesy."

Sirius' expression took on a ferocious scowl. "Snivilus..." he literally growled, hair sprouting across his face as his mouth and nose began to push out in a muzzle.

"_Sirius!_" the redhead snapped. The Black Heir realized what he was doing and snapped out of it, transforming back and shaking himself. She looked at him, hesitating before speaking again. "Is it... hard... to control your other form?" she wondered aloud. "Once you complete your animagus training?"

Sirius shook his head. "Not really, no. When you first completely transform you'll have to deal with the creatures instincts and emotions, but they wont influence you when you're human. James and I found ourselves going through partial transformations due to heightened emotions only a couple of months ago and other animagi we've talked to say it only begins to happen after several thousand transformations. They say its like any other spell, wanded or wandless. Eventually using it simply becomes instinct. And you're trying to distract me. Snivilus is responsible for James death. Admittedly we've been trying to kill each other for... nearly a decade in all honesty, but that doesn't change the fact that he succeeded and he needs to pay for it!"

"And how do you intend to do that?" Lily snapped. "Every way I can think of ends with you back on your way to Azkaban or dead! I've already lost James, would you have your goddaughter and I loose you too?"

Sirius looked somewhat abashed, but no less angry. "You act as if I couldn't get away with it..." he growled. "You really have that little faith in me?"

Lily looked at him incredulously, her face coloring as well. "Sirius! Listen to yourself! Ignoring the fact that you're talking about murder rather than slaying Snape on the battlefield, you're not exactly known for being subtle! It was Peter and Remus who kept you and James out of permenant detention or expulsion back in school and this is far more serious! You're taking about _murder_ for Morgana's sake! I want Severus to suffer as much as you do, probably more, but you're not going to be killing him in cold blood!"

Sirius snorted and backed down. "Who ever said anything about killing him?" he grumbled irritably. "To quote one of the old mans favorite sayings, there are far worse fates than death."

~! #$%^&*()_+

Lucious Malfoy sat contentedly in his seat on the Wizengamont as the dangerous elements of his organization were tried and sentenced to Azkaban, the dementors kiss or execution. It hadn't been particularly hard to pay off the quartermaster to give him a fouled dose of Veritaserum. One non-poisonous, but absolutely worthless, dose in his tea and one testimony to his innocence and having been under the imperious curse later and he was home free. The war had been hurting the cause for pure-blood domination there at the end. Even with their total victory mere weeks away even he had been able to recognize that. You could not be a rich powerful upper class without a series of lower classes with which to sit upon and Voldemort's crusade had ended with more pure bloodlines spilt over the mans hands than any other upheaval in the history books. On top of that the Malfoy family coffers had suffered greatly with the dark lords frivolous expenditures.

No, it was far more useful and comfortable to use society itself as the tool from which to dominate. Graft was easy to predict and manipulate and considering the low cost of living in their society, cheaper than funding a war. It would take him decades to recover what the dark lord had cost them, but he would do it, and more importantly he would profit from it.

The only thing that worried him was Lily Potter.

He gazed down at the red-haired woman as she sat in the Potter family seat, Sirius Black beside her and frowned. Lily Potter was the Epitome of a first generation sorceress and the reason that her kind was tolerated at all in his society. Talented, intelligent and possessing power in spades her only fault was how she had been raised. In the old days, before the ministry and the statute of secrecy; children like her would be taken from their fearful, ignorant and typically religious parents and fostered among magical families. Most would be educated as lower class workers among the wizarding world as befit their low station and breeding, but gems like her would have been snapped up and fostered into an old, rich family alongside the son she had been purchased to marry upon coming of age.

New blood did not always mean diminished blood.

Unfortunately with the eventual success of the witch hunts and the rise of the ministry and statute of secrecy their society had been forced to abandon such practices and the mudbloods had been allowed to be raised almost unchallenged among their muggle relatives. When they returned to proper society at the age of eleven they were filled with ideas about magic, religion, society and blood that were simply ludicrous and always took poorly to being corrected. Assuming they even bothered to try and learn.

Lily, from what his spies had told him, had at least bothered to learn, but had come to some rather contrary and disgraceful conclusions. Normally he would just write her off as another failure of her kind and the ministry in general, but with her well publicized defeat of his master she was well on her way to becoming a celebrity on the same level as that old fool Dumbledore.

Dumbledore was at least a half-blood, and as unconscionable as that fact was most people conveniently forgot that his mother had been a mudblood and merely remembered that Albus Dumbledore Senior had been a pureblood of an OLD family in good standing. Many of the also forgot that the elder Dumbledore, who had died in Azkaban when Albus and Aberforth had been still too young for hogwarts, had gone there for casting very visible and very deadly curses on a group of muggle children. These two things were what allowed his reputation to grow beyond that of 'just some impressive halfblood' to a leader among the wizarding world.

Potters bride didn't even have that to make her respectable.

Something would need to be done.

Lucius paused in his musings as the court room erupted in chatter. The man on trial, that _idiot_ Igor Karkaroff had accused Severus Snape of being a death eater (and rightfully so) in order to save his own skin, and when Dumbledore had stood to defend the dark lords potions expert and death eaters prime healer, _Lily Potter_ had stood to decry the man! That in of itself was not entirely surprising, according to Narcissa the pair of them had had a major falling out in his wife's last year and Lily was **known** for her grudges, but for her to stand against Dumbledore... Perhaps he could reconsider his position on the woman? If she was willing to defy the headmaster publicly perhaps he could use various third parties to sway this particular popular hero to a more neutral or even beneficial stance in their world..?

Eliminate her, marginalize her, or sway her to the cause... those were the choices he was wrestling with at the moment.

He would have to do some digging. Perhaps have it 'found' that one of her parents was in fact a squib making her a half blood rather than a rallying point for muggleborn propaganda... Yes, that could work. It would also serve to somewhat desensationalize her. If he revealed that their lord had been a halfblood as well as had been suggested by Nott Senior (who had grown up with the nascent Lord Voldemort) he could turn the whole thing into a squabble between halfbloods instead of a tale of the demon and the savior. Yes, that would work. Now he just had to figure out the details and decide whether or not to save Severus. Narcissa had named the man godfather to their son when he was born and if he did nothing she'd likely never let him hear the end of it. As an added bonus, letting the man burn would remove another threat to his own 'innocence' whilst saving him could secure him the use and loyalty of an accomplished potions master who had already proved his worth and held award records for his work.

Quietly, Lord Malfoy left the chair his grand-father had purchased and left the room. There was lots to do... Lots to do...

~! #$%^&*()_+

AN: This is the last chapter. You want more, read the authors note; continuance is up to challenge or adoption fics. Whether you pick up immediately where I leave off or go with the Potter/Black twins eleventh birthday is up to you as is the fate of Severus Snape, the actions of Lucious Malfoy and the surviving career of Barty Crouch Sr.

Other things to think about is the career of one Arthur Septimus Weasley, his success or failure in raising Septimus Uthar Weasley who replaces Ginevra Molly Weasley, whether Snape succeeds in drugging and Raping Lily Potter, the possibility of Sirius marrying and having kids now that he's not going to spend 12 years in Azkaban and if or how he reconciles with the rest of his family.

One thing I particularly want anyone looking to take this to consider is that the curse-bonded Potter girls will need to stay close together and will likely share a twin bond. Anyone you pair them with, together or seperately, will also need to stay close to each other. Personally I think it'd be hilarious to see the Harry and Bella with Gred and Forge; i just have too many things going on to write it and not nearly the patience to plan a story that long, especially when this ones been gnawing on my leg for so long and has moved forward so little.


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